A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) (13 page)

Dr. Max frowned.  “How are you getting her from here to there?”

“That’s been the topic of a fair amount of conversation.  We’ve got a special coating spell on the car windows and we’ll go in through Jamie’s back yard, which has been cleared of its usual small children and troublemakers.  I’ll ride along and help guard Hannah’s head.”

The brain clamp.  “Am I going to need that all the time?”

“We’re not sure.”  Lauren smiled.  “We’ll figure that out after we bust you out of here.”

Twelve years in a mental institution taught you a lot of things—including when someone was feeding you a reassuring line of pablum.

Lauren winced.  “Sorry.  Totally guilty.”  She sat down on the edge of the bed.  “We have people signed up for round-the-clock shifts for the first week, if they’re necessary.  We’re hoping that being in Jamie’s house without the brain clamp will be okay, mostly so you can get a little time away from nosy witches if you want it.”

It sounded like a careful plan.  And a lot of generosity from a bunch of strangers.  “What happens after the first week?”

“Jamie and Retha will start working with you as quickly as possible, figuring out ways for you to control your own magic.  But until then, you’ll have help.”  Brown eyes met hers, full of rock-solid promise.  “We’ll do that for as long as it takes.”

She’d seen that look before.  In Dr. Max’s eyes.  Hannah turned to the doctor who had stuck with her for twelve long years.  And had no idea what to say.

He shrugged a shoulder and took the two steps to her door.  “Come on, kiddo.  I’ll lead the jailbreak.”

She stepped through the door, puzzled—and saw the hallway.  Faces, all familiar, lined the walls.  Poked out of doors.  Edgar.  Harvey.  Pete.  The assistant director who would one day be a frog.  Belinda.  Mason.  Staff who had brought her breakfast, sedatives, and the occasional joke.

Oh, crikey. 

“They’ve come to see you leave,” said Dr. Max, taking her arm.

Beside her, Lauren let out a long, careful breath.  “Wow.  They’re all really excited for you.  Happy.”

Hannah smiled.  “They’re crazy, not dead.”  She stepped forward, head held high.

It was time to go.

Chapter 10

Sometimes insomnia had its rewards.  And so did a world where it wasn’t the middle of the night everywhere.

Lauren slid into Moira’s tub, smiling at her early-morning company.

Nat handed over a cup of tea.  “Aaron says there will be breakfast in an hour.”

Her stomach was still on California time.  “Not hungry, thanks.”

“Drink the tea.”  Moira’s words came with a twinkle, but that didn’t make them any less an order.  “It will help you get back to sleep.”

Lauren sighed.  Insomnia was probably pretty obvious when you showed up looking for a soak at this hour of the morning.  “When I close my eyes, I keep seeing yesterday.”  And the days before that.

“The tea will help with that as well.”  Their elder healer’s tone was even—and still made Lauren squirm.  “As the infusion Ginia left for you would have.”

Damn.  “Devin tried to make me drink it.”  And she’d acted like a cranky two-year-old.

Nat only watched and issued a steady, silent invitation.

Lauren laid her head back on her favorite pillow rock.  Maybe there was more than one way to exorcise the dreams.  “I keep replaying the scene from the hall at Chrysalis House as Hannah walked out.”

“A moment of import,” said Moira gently.

And how.  “Yeah.  They were so happy for her.  All these people who looked like empty shells, standing in the hallway.  This one guy was sitting in a chair facing the wall.”  Lauren choked back the barbed-wire tangle of his mind.  “I should know by now.  Lots of Tab’s kids do stuff like that, and I know they feel as much as any of us.”

Moira’s eyes were unfathomably kind.

Lauren looked down at the rippling water and let the moment wash over her again.  “He felt hope.  Only two people have left that wing of Chrysalis House in the last two decades, and when Hannah walked down the hall, every single one of them lit up.”

Hope.  That one day, it might be them taking those steps.

Nat’s mind was drowning in compassion.  For all of them.  “How was that for Hannah?”

“She walked down the hall and stopped by every last one of them.  Sometimes just a word or two.  Or none at all.”  It had been amazing and quintessentially human and unfathomably sad.  “If she has to go back, it will hurt more than just her.”  Every soul in the hallway would weep.

Warm fingers met hers in the water’s depths.  “Witches aren’t the only ones who love.”  Nat, who knew that better than any of them.

“I know.”  But it had kicked her someplace hard.  “We have to help her.”  And there were far too many people in Witch Central afraid that might not be possible.

Which needed to stop.  Starting with one realtor who needed to tell the truth, get some sleep, and start doing her job.  She looked at the two women sitting in the pool with her in the early light of morning and took the first step.  “I need to tell you what I saw.  The first time I met her.”  It was getting in the way.

“Of course you do.”  Moira’s words were soothing balm.  “I do believe that’s why the birds stirred us early this morning.”

Then the birds were way smarter than one stubborn realtor.  Lauren breathed out air that felt like water, the words so damnably difficult to say.  “I saw Ginia here, in your cottage.  I think she lived here.”  So many ways that had hurt her soul—and awed it.  “She looked so grown up.”  Her eyes sought Moira’s, seeking forgiveness for what that meant.

And found gratitude.  “Ah, my lovely—did you think that would make me sad?”  Old hands reached across the water, offering comfort.  “I know my days here draw to a close.”

Lauren sniffled and let the inner child who had been kicking rocks for days have her say.  “It felt so real, you being gone.”

“For as long as you remember me, I will still be here,” said Moira softly, each word pure compassion.

The inner child contemplated a tantrum.  “It won’t be the same.”

“I should hope not.”  Eyebrows peaked above amused green eyes.  “You’ll just have to come visit more often while I’m still here.”

Lauren managed a smile, like she was meant to.  And wished, fervently, to grow up to be even a tiny bit as cool as the mighty matriarch of Fisher’s Cove.

  Moira settled back beside Nat again, pleased.  “Ah, it does my heart every kind of good to think of Ginia all grown up and tending to my gardens.”

Lauren wasn’t there yet.  The loss not-yet-here had sliced her right in half.  “It might not happen that way.”

“Of course not.  Precog is tricky stuff.”  Moira smiled.  “And we don’t want our sweet girl feeling like she has to grow up and tend to an old witch’s flowers.”

But even the possibility of it was a warm and cozy blanket around their matriarch’s shoulders.  Lauren leaned her head back, wishing she could accept so easily.  She looked over at her best friend.  “I think I need more yoga classes.  How do you and Jamie do this?”  The small boy with the snowman was deeply real to them—until this day, Lauren hadn’t really understood how much.

Nat shrugged.  “We love what is and what might be.”

And made it look as easy as blowing a kiss.  “I thought I knew how it felt for the two of you.”  She’d been attached to Jamie’s brain when he’d first seen the toddler and the snowman.  “I wasn’t even close.”

Nat breathed in and out in mute, absolute sympathy.  “You saw a baby too.”

“It was just a flash.”  A tiny infant, only seen for a fraction of a second.  Lauren felt her stability shaking again.  “I hardly even saw her.”

“It was enough.”  Moira’s hands crossed the pool again.  “Your heart knows that.  Don’t let that very bright and rational mind of yours say otherwise.”

Lauren felt the tears coming.  “I loved her.”  So ridiculously, inescapably much.

“Aye.”  A soft shoulder now, and the tight arms of comfort.  “And perhaps you will one day hold her again.”

The grief that had been shimmering for days slid out into the safe waters of Moira’s pool.  “I’m afraid to look again.”

The arms held her closer.  “I know, my sweet.  I know.  But you will.  And if you need to come cry again in my pool, you’ll do that too.”

-o0o-

It was sad when a guy had to make his own granola for breakfast.  Jamie looked down at the pathetic contents of his bowl.  Nat’s came out of the oven all crispy and clumpy and golden brown.   His was burnt and looked like the stuff Kenna fed the squirrels.

Good grief.  A whole twenty-four hours without them and he was turning morbid.

Maybe something to do with the incessant chalkboard in his head.  Bringing Hannah to his house had seemed like a reasonable idea—empty, lots of magical precautions in place, and he was one of two people she could look at reasonably safely.

But the scratching, scraping sound behind his left ear had plagued him all night.  Maybe his mother wasn’t entirely crazypants.  Hannah’s magic, calling to theirs.

No freaking thanks.  He grabbed his spoon and started dunking granola bits in the yogurt.

And then heard footsteps on the stairs and felt like an idiot.  It was her first morning out of captivity and all he had to offer was squirrel food.  Jamie dove for the fridge.  Bacon didn’t take long.  All witches liked bacon.

“Good morning.”  She stood in the doorway, looking tentative as all hell.

“Hey.”  Shit.  No bacon.  “Sleep okay?”

“Yes.  No.”  She laughed, a sound at odds with the wallflower body language.  “I kept seeing shadows on the wall from the tree outside.”

He decided to go with the laughter.  “Monsters under the bed, huh?”

She relaxed a little further.  “Maybe a few.”

Probably not a surprise.  He reached out a gentle mental channel—and heard singing.  Some childhood jingle about bluebells and cockle shells.

A mind trying to cope with her first breakfast in his kitchen.

Her fingers trailed over the wall to the light switch.  “Do you mind if I turn these on?”

Sun beamed in the windows.  He frowned, agreeable, but perplexed.  “Sure, go ahead.”

Her hands shoved together, lights still off.  “Sorry.  Every morning, I get up and go to the small dining room.  I sing a song for Belinda, because she likes it when people greet her that way.  And I make sure the lights are on, because Mason can’t eat without them.”  She paused, wildly uncomfortable.  “I guess I’m feeling a bit out of sorts this morning.”

Crap—that explained the song in her head and a whole lot more.  Giving up on the fridge, Jamie picked up his iPhone and sent a text to the breakfast rescue squad.  Time to do a much better job of making a witch feel welcome.  “I’ll feed you in just a bit.  Come on, let’s go sit down in the living room.” 

She wandered in behind him, taking in the décor.  “I like your house.  It’s got this really relaxed feeling.”

He grinned.  “It’s missing the wild toddler.”

Her eyes circled the room, suddenly sad.  “You took down your family pictures.”

“Yeah.  Just a precaution.”  He reached for his phone again and tightened his hold on her brain clamp.  “Wanna see her?”

She wanted.  And she feared.  He waited as her mind wrestled—and finally, full of sorrow, opted for safety.  “Maybe not right now.”

Damn.  This wasn’t the morning she deserved.  And he was running out of ideas on how to fix it.  Usually they’d give her a ten-year-old sidekick and a rapid introduction to the inviting chaos of Witch Central, but that wasn’t possible this time.  They’d gotten Hannah out, but until the brain trust reconvened, nobody had much idea what came next.

She eyed his knitting, tossed sloppily on one end of the couch—he’d been working on a very pathetic scarf at night lately to help his fire witch of a daughter fall asleep.  Hannah’s eyes were shuttered, but her mind yearned. 

Huh.  He sat down and picked up the misbegotten excuse for a scarf.  “You knit?”

“No.”  Now a touch of bleakness edged in.  “Belinda does.  Back at Chrysalis House.”

And whatever the rest of them thought about her life there, that small bit of yarn communion had clearly been a highlight of her days.

Jamie got up.  Time to be a guy of action.  His one and only weaving project had involved some cardboard and a lot of five-year-old frustration, and bore zero resemblance to the contraption they’d liberated from Chrysalis House along with Hannah.  Above his pay grade.  “Come on—I want to take you to see someone.”

Wariness.  So much uncertainty.  “Is that safe?”

It had to be better than children’s songs, light switches, and his sad excuse for granola.  Time to hook the new witch into the part of their community that went nutso over a ball of yarn.  Caro would know what to do with a weaver.

And it was dumb that they hadn’t hooked her in already—her mind powers beat his hands down.  They’d moved fast and missed the obvious.  Hannah could sit in Knit a Spell and inhale yarn fumes and maybe find her feet. 

He just had to get her there.  Jamie winced mentally and looked over at his new charge.  “How do you feel about teleporting?”

She laughed—and then caught sight of his face and paled.  “For real?”