A Celtic Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 6) (15 page)

The pressure on her head eased almost instantly. 
Better?
  Sophie’s mind presence was soothing, cool. 
I cleared your channels a little.

Cass didn’t bother to nod—clearly they were all far more seasoned at this than she was. 

Someone gave Mike a mental kick in the pants, which shattered the lingering awe in the group.  He chuckled. 
Okay, let’s get moving.  Sean, can you hold the picture of Moira’s rock in your mind really clearly?  Like a beacon.  See if you can make it shiny or something.  Cass, we’re going to look around the rocks you feel and try to find Sean’s signal.

That seemed sensible.  Almost. 
Can he make the rock noisy instead?  I don’t really “see” anything.  I hear.

The circle issued a collective groan in chorus with one young rock witch’s glee.

Cass grinned.  Apparently Sean was a fine noisemaker.

The group quieted, a suddenly disciplined vibe she innately recognized.  The attentive, sure movements of people long used to working together.  Musicians had it, and so did Nan’s healers.  A glow of energy from the other side of the circle—and then expectancy.  Waiting.

Sean’s speeding up some of the molecules in the rock’s surface.
  Marcus offered competent, distant commentary.
 If noise can be made, it should happen shortly.

She listened, ears straining to hear a new sound in the low, familiar beat of her rocks.  And nearly giggled when she found it.  Somewhere, far in the distance, came the distinct “argh” of a pirate.

I believe that’s what you seek.
 Marcus’s mindvoice was dry as dust.

Cass couldn’t resist the urge to tweak him.  To bridge the distance. 
That’s fine magic—he must make you proud.

Oh, he does that.
 Finally, the touch of humor she’d been seeking. 
In between bouts of making us crazy.

She grinned.  It probably took a certain level of maturity to appreciate Sean’s stunts.  Fortunately, tour buses were havens for the Seans of the world.  She had a highly developed appreciation for their hijinks.

And so, well hidden under his pithy words, did Marcus.  Cass leaned into his mental presence, moth to flame.

Can you find out why the rock has cracked?
 Moira’s mind this time, tinged with light amusement.

Dangit.  Cass snapped her focus back into place.  Buddy would have whacked her on the head with his bow if she’d woolgathered this much.  She let herself sink down into the steadiness of the rocks, a lifetime of shared presence guiding her instincts.

Talking to the rocks was generally futile—if they had ears, human voices weren’t what they heard.  But she could listen.  With the skill of a master musician, she tuned out the sounds that didn’t matter now.  The low heartbeat, the surging of faraway molten flows, the jingle of pebble and sand’s eternal whispering dance. 

It was the pirate she sought. 

And what she heard when she found it made her smile.  A young rock, one that had been willing to be shaped by magic and love, having itself a little stretch.

Teenage apology from a rock older than humanity.

The rocks hummed.  Easily fixed.

We can help. 
Mike held out a glowing nimbus. 

Cass stayed in rock communion, watching in awe as the trio of earth witches wove a delicate web of magic around the crack.  A pause as they joined forces with a power far larger and older than any of them and offered healing.

The crack melted away, a nano-moment in the sands of rock time.

Time to go. 
Marcus sounded a bit alarmed. 
Moira tires.  We need to close the circle.

After the slow beat of the rocks, it felt like a footrace.  Lines of magic snapping everywhere.  Connections lost.

Cass opened her eyes, suddenly adrift—and was comforted by Moira’s smiling face across the circle.  She sucked in a breath.  “The rocks were just having a little stretch.  They’re sorry they messed up the pool.”  As sorry as rocks got, anyhow.

She pulled suddenly cold hands up into her sleeves.

The rest of what the teenage rock had said, she planned to thoroughly ignore.  No hunk of granite got to decide who made her heart beat faster.

She turned and walked away, shaken by the pull of a gentle, complicated man and a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.

Music was her singular focus.  Her lifeblood.

She and Rosie could visit here—but they couldn’t stay.

And it troubled her that somewhere nestled in the touch of the rocks and the mind of the man, she had wanted to.

Chapter 11

Sophie opened the front door of the inn, Adam already craning his head.  “You hear her, don’t you, sweet boy?”  Curious, she released him from the carrier and set him down on all fours.

And watched, grinning, as her boy who usually hid in a corner beelined for the parlor as fast as his chubby, crawling limbs could take him.  Quickly, she slid out of her wet boots and followed.

Adam was moving more slowly now, head tipped up and eyes glued on the woman at the other end of the room. 

Cassidy smiled from her stool by the window and studied the small boy headed her direction.  “Heard the music, did you, love?”  She put her fiddle back up on her shoulder.  “What do you like best, hmm?”

Fingers flew into a melodic, glitzy version of
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
.  Adam sat up, wool longies bunched at his knees.

Still watching him, Cass switched to something fast and bright that Sophie didn’t recognize.  Her son’s feet squirmed on the floor.

And then she felt the tug of distant magic, and Rosie began to sing something long, low, and melancholy.  Sophie felt her own earth power rising in response.

Adam began to sway.

Cass got down off the stool, crouching down beside the small, transfixed boy.  Note by note, she cocooned the two of them in soft, aching sound.

Sophie drank in her son’s silent, easy joy.  And wished for Mike.

Her husband had been exhausted after the tub repair.  Not from fixing a crack—for a witch of his power, that was all in a day’s work.  It was trying to follow Cassidy’s magic that had flattened him.  Trying to learn something that might help their boy.

But before falling facedown on the bed in a stupor, he’d said words that had lit Sophie’s mind on fire.  “Cass hears the planet, Soph.  Maybe that’s what Adam needs, too.”

It made an eerie kind of sense.  Adam was the child of two witches connected deeply to the energies of living earth and rock.

And it was the best clue they had. 

Something beat out of alignment in their son.  And a woman with a violin on her shoulder and a gentle smile on her face knew how to fix it.

-o0o-

Such a sweet baby.  Cass let the last notes of her improvised jazz lullaby fade into the room’s corners, her eye still on the lovely boy.  She spoke in low tones, pitched just loud enough for Sophie to hear.  “It’s rare for me to have such a rapt audience.”

“Your music is magic for him.”

Decades of training and Irish blood let Cass hear the unsaid things better than most.  “Tell me about your son.”  She looked up and met sober eyes.  “You worry about him.”  Lots of people did.

Sophie sank onto the floor, smiling as Adam crawled off toward a pile of blocks at the edge of the room.  “Some days.”

“Some kids are just different.”  Her brother Rory had been one of those.  Late to walk, late to talk—and as Nan was still wont to say, late to finish sowing his wild oats.

“It’s more than that.”  Sophie’s fingers played with the tassels on the edge of the rug.  “I’m an introvert.  A scientist and a thinker.  But I’m happy that way, you know?”  She looked over at her son, busy pushing a block across the floor with his toes.  “Too often, Adam isn’t happy.”

Cass’s sympathy flared.  She’d seen it.  Adam squirming at the dinner table as the other babies sat happily babbling in someone’s lap.  “I saw Mike out walking last night.”  Under the light of the moon, a small head peeking over his shoulders.

“Letting me sleep.  Adam’s pretty nocturnal.”

Cass scooted one block on top of the other for the watching baby.  “He’s got beautiful eyes.” 

“Thank you.”  Sophie reached out and added a third block to the tower.  “Sometimes I get so caught up in what might be wrong that I forget all the wonderful things.”

The pieces came together for Cass.  “You’re a healer.  That must be hard.”

No words.  Just a head tipped down.

Oh, man.  Healing hearts was Nan’s work, not hers.  “He’s lucky, you know.”  She’d seen other things at the dinner table and in the dark of night.  “He’s very well loved, no matter what his struggles are.”

Sophie’s breath was shaky.  “Yes.  As are we.  I can’t imagine this journey without the people around us.”

It was the kind of tight-knit, loving community Cass had run from.  The kind that gave and took and didn’t leave enough energy for the all-consuming music.  “You must have lived here a long time.”

“Feels that way.”  The smile moved all the way to Sophie’s eyes this time.  “It will be two years come spring.”

Cass felt her laughter bubbling up.  “Wow.  You grow roots fast.”

Friendship reached across the few feet of empty space.  “It’s a good place to bloom.” 

The unspoken wish tore at Cass’s heart.  They would welcome her here, her and her fiddle that calmed troubled babies.  But travelers didn’t grow roots.

Naked toes knocked over the tower of blocks.  Adam’s laugh came all the way from his belly, and Cass chuckled at his infectious happiness.  Such a normal sound.

And then she saw the hesitant joy on Sophie’s face and realized it wasn’t normal at all.

-o0o-

It was the kind of sunny day that had the people of Fisher’s Cove wandering all over tarnation. 

Marcus waved at Sophie as she headed down the road with Adam, and ratcheted Morgan up his hip for the billionth time.  If he didn’t get to the inn soon, she’d want some more of her infernal flowers.  And hungry as he was, they’d probably come up shriveled and brown.

They’d spent far too long on the beach, come home ravenous, and then he’d burnt the last egg, landed the toast on the floor, and tried to feed his daughter a bowl of overly soggy oatmeal.

She had
not
been impressed.

Granted, it hadn’t looked very appetizing.  He grunted and slid Morgan up yet again.  Damn winter jacket was too slippery for child hoisting.  “Let’s go see if Uncle Aaron will take pity on us, munchkin.”

Anyone in the village would happily feed Morgan, but Aaron would have a few scraps for her father as well.  Arm ready to fall off, Marcus stomped up the porch stairs and deposited his daughter inside the door.  He took one last glance at the sun—odds are it would be gone by the time they came back out.

In his life, sunshine had always been ephemeral.

Morgan sat on the floor inside, frantically waving her boots in the air. 

“In a hurry, are you?”  Marcus bent down and slid them off her wiggling legs, and then watched in astonishment as she scurried toward the parlor.  Aaron was almost certainly in the kitchen.

It wasn’t until he pulled off his wool hat that he knew where she’d gone.  Bright, Irish-hued laughter spilled from the parlor as a small girl found her target. 

Marcus closed his eyes just for a moment.  He wasn’t ready for Cassidy Farrell again today.  Touching her mind once had been more than enough—and an hour of storm-making on the beach had done little to erase it.

She was only here for a few days.  A week at most.  As ephemeral as the winter sun.

He would fetch Morgan, beg some food in the kitchen, and leave.  There was no other sane answer.

Which might have worked—if Cass hadn’t begun to play.

-o0o-

Moira tipped up her face to the bright afternoon.  A smart witch always said hello to the sky, even when she was outside for only a moment.  Sophie had stuck her head in the cottage with a message—Cass was playing.

And Sophie’s eyes had said what her words couldn’t.

A mother’s wish.

So Moira had grabbed her cloak and left her tea, because she loved both the babe and the woman who wished on his behalf.

And if she caught a wee fiddling song or two while she was about her mission, so much the better.  There had always been music growing up—and until Cassidy Farrell arrived, Moira hadn’t been aware how much she missed it.

A few steps from the inn, she could hear the easy part of her wish well on its way to being granted.  The faint sounds of violin made their way out the crooks and crannies of the old walls into the brisk afternoon air.

Calling.

Moira let herself in the door—and realized she wasn’t the only one being called.  Marcus, however, wasn’t nearly so happy about it.  He stood, back to the wall, staring at the parlor with something akin to fear on his face.

And underneath it, a longing so fierce, so bright, it was a wonder the wall hadn’t melted.

It gave her heart such great, galloping hope.  There was no one who more deserved to be blindsided by something he fiercely wanted than her nephew.