A Hidden Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 2) (34 page)

When she opened her eyes, Gran lay on a low bed
onscreen with Sophie at her head. Sophie’s face creased in the
focus of healing work, not the grief of death.

They’d done it. Gran was in healer hands.

Marcus took her arm. “Now we wait, and pray.”
And he whisked them into Realm.

~ ~ ~

Sophie tried to quiet her mind. Panic was no
friend to a healer. She looked up into Mike’s eyes. “You can feel
it too?”

He nodded and glanced briefly around the room.
“We all do. Stroke, and a bad one. Front left hemisphere.”

“Her channels are badly blocked,” said Meliya,
the oldest healer in the room. “I’ve already started working on
that.”

Sophie nodded. That wouldn’t address the worst
of the damage to Aunt Moira’s brain, but it would prevent any
further damage to the rest of her body. Stroke could kill nerves
and cause permanent paralysis.

Two of the younger healers sat at Moira’s feet,
perfusing her body with oxygen, clearing out the toxins. They had
surprisingly little work to do. Aunt Moira’s garden had breathed
for her. The crisis was in her brain.

Mike touched her hands. “Ready when you
are.”

He was right. They had to get started.

Sophie dropped into healing trance and felt
other healers gently joining. Surrounding them all, just outside
the room where Aunt Moira lay, was the beating power of a full
circle. Sophie drew on their strength, and their steadiness.

Then she began the delicate and tricky journey
into her patient’s brain.

There were two kinds of stroke—blockages and
burst vessels. She was almost positive they were dealing with the
second. Aunt Moira was an experienced healer, and any trained
healer did regular self-scans. She wouldn’t have missed a major
blockage in her brain. Unfortunately, burst vessels were a lot more
complicated to heal.

Partway up the middle cerebral artery, she found
what she dreaded—a lake of pooling blood. She felt Mike’s calm
breathing beside her and steadied. She would do her best.

With quick instructions, she dispatched her
team. Mike and Meliya would slow Aunt Moira’s heart while they went
to work on the burst vessel. Her job would be to grow the new
artery walls. It was the type of magic at which earth-witch healers
excelled.

And a battle she was very likely to lose. One
witch could only do so much, and Mike couldn’t be spared from his
job.

She felt a hand slide into hers. Ginia.
Earth-witch healer-in-training. Once more, Sophie steadied. With
sure mental hands, she began to work. Grow a cell, stitch it to its
neighbors. Grow another cell, repeat. It wasn’t difficult work—it
was a race. They had about two minutes.

When Ginia had the basics down, Sophie left her
working at the easier part of the tear and headed for the worst of
the damage. She could feel the younger healers siphoning blood away
so she could see, but it was still making the work very
difficult.

An errant thread of power caught her attention,
and she turned around. Then she gaped in shock. Aunt Moira’s torn
blood vessel was growing toward her at impossible speed. The kind
of speed that took twenty healers, not one trainee. There weren’t
twenty earth-witch healers on the planet.

No,
said Jamie’s mental voice.
But
there’s one, and Elorie’s pushed out Ginia’s magic to every
spellcoder in Realm. We’re replicating as fast as we can, and
Ginia’s coordinating. Can you use it
?

Oh, hell, yes. Sophie grabbed the growing blood
vessel as it nearly knocked her over and began pushing it sideways.
With this kind of growth, they didn’t need to repair the tear. They
could go around it.

Thirty seconds later, they had a new vessel
ready to join above the tear. Sophie worked feverishly on the join,
as did every other spare pair of healer hands.

They backed away with seconds to spare. Sophie
signaled Mike and Meliya to speed Aunt Moira’s heart back up.

Then she did what every healer does when life is
on the line. She prayed.

~ ~ ~

Elorie lay with her head in Aaron’s lap,
drifting slowly out of sleep. Her eyes shot open as memory hit.
“Gran?”

Aaron stroked her hair gently. “We don’t know
anything more. The healers are still working.” He smiled in thanks
as Nell bent down with a bowl of soup. “Eat. You did fierce magic
to bring her here to Realm, huge magic to help heal her brain, and
you need to keep your strength up.”

Nell sat down beside them. “We’ve been feeding
the masses. There were too many witches running on low gas tanks.”
She gestured toward the low building that held Moira. “The healers
are peeling off one at a time to eat.”

Elorie grasped her hand. “Any news?”

Nell shook her head. “No. They’re working to
repair as much of the damage as they can.” Her voice softened.
“She’s alive, and that’s a miracle.”

Mia wandered over, bearing a tray of sandwiches.
“Hungry? Or would you like a couch to sit on?”

“A couch?” Elorie tried to shake the fogginess
out of her head.

Mia grinned. “Trying to keep everyone
comfortable.”

Nell gave her a big hug. “You do good work,
kiddo.”

Elorie looked around in growing shock. When
they’d arrived in Realm, it had been in the middle of a huge grassy
plain—the best Jamie could come up with on very short notice. Now
it was a huge and lovely garden, with big shade trees, flowers,
couches, food buffets—and literally hundreds of people.

It was a vigil. With every witch she’d ever
known.

Then she looked at Mia and Aaron, and turning
her head again, realized most of Fisher’s Cove was present, too.
Scratch that. Clearly there were plenty of non-witches present as
well.

Words caught in her throat. “She’ll get better
for sure. Gran would never miss a gathering.”

Mia nodded, eyes fierce. “That’s the idea.”

There were all kinds of magic. Elorie handed the
rest of her soup to Aaron and stood up, grabbing Mia’s hand. “I
need your help. Can you find me a flute?”

~ ~ ~

Sophie’s hands dropped to her sides. She was too
exhausted to move them. They’d done everything they could. The rest
was up to Aunt Moira and the strength of her spirit.

Mike nestled her into his shoulder. She could
feel his shuddering tiredness too. Her entire team had given
everything they had.

A soft snore in the corner caught her attention.
Ginia lay curled like a mouse, quietly sleeping. She’d done the
work of a fully trained healer, and then some. “She’s going to be
an amazing healer one day.”

“She already is,” Mike said. “That spellcoding
idea was sheer genius.”

Yes. If Aunt Moira lived, Ginia and Elorie’s
brilliant teamwork would be one very important reason why.

She stretched out a hand toward Ginia. Someone
should check to see she hadn’t gone into channel shock. Mike laced
his fingers in hers. “Relax. She’s fine, just sleeping. Every
healer in the room has checked on her.”

She laid a hand on her belly. The babe was fine
too. It had been an anguishing line to walk, giving all she could
to her healing without putting the life in her belly at risk.

“You did enough,” Mike said. “And Moira would be
the first to tell you that any more would have been wrong.”

Sophie nodded. Her head knew that. Her heart had
cracked in two at the choice.

Mike handed her a protein drink, and she sipped
obediently. This, too, was part of keeping their Seedling safe. And
there would be more healing to come. Months of it.

At least she hoped there would be. Aunt Moira
still lay frighteningly still and cold.

Ginia sat up in the corner and rubbed her eyes.
“Who’s playing the music?”

Music? Sophie cocked her head to listen as
gorgeous lilting notes floated into the room. It sounded like
Elorie’s flute at full circle.

Elorie’s flute.

Sophie pushed off of Mike and stumbled to the
door, opening it wide. Music wafted in, the moon floated high in
the sky, and hundreds of faces circled the building, holding
candles and softly singing as Elorie’s music soared.

She waved urgently to Jamie. “Can you disappear
the building? Put her in the middle of this.”

Moments later, the building vanished, and Aunt
Moira lay on a bed under the night sky. Flowers bloomed all around
her, and the moon floated in a little closer. The coder and the
witch in Sophie both marveled. It was magnificent.

Jamie touched her shoulder and spoke quietly.
“Anything else we can do?”

One last thing. “Can you push the music into her
head? Can you help her see this? Very, very gently.”

He grimaced. “I’m not gentle.”

Lauren stepped up beside him, clutching her new
crystal ball, and took a deep breath. “I am. I’ll do it.” She
closed her eyes, swaying slightly. A few seconds later, she smiled
and broadcast.
She’s listening. Just barely, but she can hear
us
.

Sophie saw tears running down dozens of faces,
but the soft singing never wavered. And Elorie’s flute had never
played with such star-touched beauty.

~ ~ ~

It was time to start the circle. That was her
job. Moira could hear her granddaughter’s flute playing, but
something wasn’t quite right. Where was her circle? Where was
she?

She struggled to see, to swim through the heavy
fog choking her mind.

The music. Listen to the music. She could see
Elorie in her mind’s eye, swaying gently as she played. The faces
in the circle, a bond of love and community and magic. So many. It
must be a very important circle.

And oh, the moon was marvelous tonight. It felt
like she could reach up and touch it. Ever so slowly, the light
melted away the fog, and she could see more clearly.

She also seemed to be lying down, and that was
very strange indeed.

Then memories of the pain flooded back, the
agony in her garden, and the awful, creeping cold.

She fought to open her eyes, and saw shadowed
heads and the day-bright moon. It really did look close enough to
touch.

“Is this heaven, then?” My, her voice sounded
terrible.

Gentle laughter and kisses rained down on her
forehead. “No, Aunt Moira, you’re still with us. You’ve come
back.”

She wasn’t dead? Moira looked around slowly, at
the blurry moon and the shadowy faces. All was not as it should be.
“Sophie, my sweet, I can’t see very well.”

Now tears fell on her face along with the
kisses. “I know, and I’m so very sorry. We’ll do what we can with
that, and it should get better over time. For now, just know that
we love you. You’ve come back to us. It will be a bit of a journey,
but you’ll rock our babies. I promise.”

Moira felt the light touch of a sleep spell, and
she gave in to the drifting. She would rock the babies. That was
fine, then.

Elorie looked up at the castle and smiled.
Lizzie would be in heaven, sleeping in a turret.

The castle was the latest inventive solution
produced by Realm’s miraculous coders. When you had hundreds of
sleepy witches, lots of beds were a good thing, and castles
happened to come with rooms aplenty.

And to her eternal astonishment, Uncle Marcus
was playing host. It was his castle Jamie and Ginia had transported
into Gran’s world, but they’d chosen it for its size, not for the
owner’s renowned hospitality. Even his virtual serving staff seemed
shocked by his manners. He’d fed everyone, had them graciously
shown to rooms, and promised a hot breakfast in the morning.

Which would be coming soon—if the Realm sky were
to be believed, the sun was just peeking over the horizon. Elorie’s
stomach growled. She needed to find some food soon, but she was
wedged into the corner of a really comfortable couch with Aaron’s
head pillowed in her lap. He hadn’t made it as far as a bed.
Judging from the snores she could hear, a number of the nearby
couches were inhabited as well.

“Want some breakfast?” asked a quiet voice over
her shoulder. Sophie slipped into the nearby armchair and laid a
tray on the table between them. “We pregnant mamas can’t sleep all
day like some people I know.”

Elorie smiled in welcome. “Mike’s still
asleep?”

“He is. Most of the healers are, but apparently
Seedling here isn’t as tired as everyone else.” Sophie patted her
belly.

Elorie picked up one of the breakfast pastries.
It smelled divine, buttery apple and a tease of cinnamon. “Have you
checked on Gran?” She’d briefly held Gran’s hand late in the night,
but the healers were keeping visitors to a minimum while she
slept.

Sophie nodded. “She’s still resting. Uncle
Marcus’s excellent kitchen staff has prepared some broth and herbal
tea for when she wakes.”

“How is she, really?” Elorie stared at her
breakfast, afraid of the answer.

“It will be a long road.” Sophie stirred her tea
aimlessly. “Her speech has definitely been affected, and her
vision. Both of those should improve with time and long-term care.
Uncle Marcus says her mind feels fairly clear, though, so that’s a
hopeful thing.”

When you practically grew up with someone, you
caught the nuances. “What aren’t you telling me, Soph?”

“There’s a lot we don’t know yet.” Her eyes
radiated distress. “She may not be able to walk. The right side of
her body has been hit very hard, and sometimes that’s hard to
reverse.”

Gran unable to walk, talk, or see? Elorie sucked
in air, fighting the sudden lightness in her head.

“Don’t you pass out on me.” A touch from Sophie,
and it got suddenly better. “She’s alive, sister mine. She’s alive,
and she’s the strongest woman I know. She’s going to need us all to
believe in her.”

Elorie nodded. Gran had been her rock for as
long as she could remember. If Gran needed to lean now, then they’d
stand strong for her, for as long as it took. She looked around at
all those gathered and waiting. There would certainly be plenty of
help.