A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) (15 page)

An entire day to play with such a treasure.

“If you need more thread than what’s under the bed, just phone over to the shop.”  Caro headed for the door and then stopped.  “Would you like to stay here for a while?”

Hannah pulled her head out of tracing the old patterns in the weft already on the loom.  “I’m sorry—what?”

Caro chuckled.  “Jamie might like to go visit his wife and daughter—they’re off at a wedding in Nova Scotia.  If you’d like to stay here for a few days, you’re more than welcome.  I live in the other side of the duplex, so you’d have your privacy.  I can have him send your bags over.”

So much generosity.  And so much choice.  Hannah’s brain stuttered to a halt.

“You’re welcome here for as long as you like.”  Caro placed a key on a small desk.  “There are basics in the cupboards and I’ll drop by some bread and soup for dinner.” 

Hannah wrapped a hand around the sturdy frame of the loom.  And for the first time since she’d stepped out of the hallway at Chrysalis House, felt her soul steadying.  “Thank you.”  Two of the most inadequate words in the history of the universe. 

“You’re welcome.  I’ll tell Jamie where to find you.  In the meantime, go anchor yourself in history.”

Hannah frowned, caught in Caro’s last words. 

The older woman smiled, eyes deep with empathy again.  “It’s no great mystery.  I imagine the future scares you.”

For lots of very good reasons.  Hannah calmed her hands—they were yanking far too hard on weft threads that looked like they’d been on the loom for half a century.

“That’s not an insult, girl.  There’s not a witch I know who would have survived your magic without fearing what comes.”  Caro walked back over and laid a hand on the weaving.  “But this?  People have woven threads through threads for thousands of years.  You connect yourself with that past every time you pick up a shuttle.  Your hands where Oma’s hands once worked.”

History under her fingers.  Hanna traced the rhythmic lines of warp and weft and finally understood why they had always called to her so.  “I loved weaving the very first time I sat down with a loom.”

“I feel that way with needles under my fingers.”  Caro touched the knitting sticking out of her bag.  “Always have, always will.  For some, it’s a pleasant hobby.”

For others, it was survival.  Hannah picked up the old, hand-carved shuttle and moved it through the shed, tears prickling the backs of her eyes.

Someone understood.

-o0o-

Moira lifted the baskets out of her craft cupboard, digging for one deeply hidden ball of wool.  Word had come from the west—their new witch loved yarn.  And history.

The last of the baskets creaked as she pulled it out.  Old, like its owner.  Carefully, she lifted out skeins and balls and little leftover bits meant to repair socks long dead.  And when she finally reached the bottom, found the wool she sought.

It was green and sturdy, spun to last on her gran’s wheel.  Given to a headstrong young woman about to head across the ocean.  And here it had sat, never quite enough for mittens and too scratchy for a hat.  A yarn that knew its purpose and had resisted any other.

It would make a fine weft for weaving.

She piled the rest of the yarns back in the basket, taking note of a couple that might make leggies for Morgan in the fall, and picked up the green ball one more time.

A gift of history and strong hands and sturdy hearts, for a witch who needed to feel all three.

Gran would be very pleased indeed.

-o0o-

He trained the baddest witch in the west—he could do this.

Jamie settled onto one mat in Nat’s studio and contemplated the one where his newest student would sit as soon as she got brave enough to come out of the back room.  It had felt totally mean to disturb her at Caro’s—she’d been so happy when he’d arrived.  Relaxed.

Something the idea of a magic lesson had shattered—but they needed to get started. 

Or at least, that had seemed reasonable until he’d dislodged Hannah’s contentment and sent his own chalkboard back into overdrive.

Jamie sighed.  Lessons with Aervyn never made his skin crawl.  This one was, even before his student came in.  He sent a quick link to his mother, zoomed in from Nova Scotia to sit quietly in the corner. 
Are you sure I’m the right witch for this?

I’m not sure any of us is.  But for now, we’re the two witches with precog.  And I’m better as backup.

Which was a nice way of saying her mind powers far outstripped his, and if someone had to do mop-up, he wasn’t equipped.  Jamie sighed again.  All true.  And apparently training a cute five-year-old had given him an unfounded amount of trainer street cred.

He looked around the studio.  Blinds tilted at an angle that let in the early afternoon sun and nothing else.  Nat’s signature comforting touches, at least as well as he could replicate them—soothing, grounding music, the wafting smell of lemon, small displays of sculptural rocks and plants, and a tea tray.  His wife believed deeply in the power of the senses to open a path to learning.

He’d take all the help he could get.

The chalkboard in his head screeched in protest and he told it to hush.  Caro had relieved him of living with Hannah.  The least he could do was train her.

Which wasn’t going to happen until he found at least a little focus.  He breathed, trying to channel his wife’s serenity.  The squishy mat felt warm under his legs.  Elsie, Nat’s occasional assistant, adding her fire magic to the soothing touches.

He felt Hannah’s presence before he heard her almost-silent footsteps crossing Nat’s bamboo floor.

Empathy spurted from his mother’s mind.
 She’s used to moving through her life making as little disturbance as possible.

He’d grown up in a house with six elephants for siblings.  Jamie’s heart hurt for the woman taking a quiet seat on the mat facing him.

She met his gaze, a simple, normal thing that made him feel better.  Four hours ago, she’d been ducking all attempts to make eye contact.  She was already learning to trust the power of her mind-witch guardians.  Just one more reason to get training underway fast.  The only adult mind witch of decent power who wasn’t taking a shift in the next couple of days was Marcus, and that was only because no one had told him yet.  The man had a wedding to attend, and nobody was going to hand him a convenient escape valve.  Not that he seemed to be looking for one.

Jamie snapped back to the present.  Nothing like sitting in front of a new student with out-of-control power and letting his mind wander.  Stuff like that would ding his street cred all to hell.  He settled more comfortably on his mat.  “Thanks for agreeing to do this so soon.” 

“This magic has owned twelve years of my life,” she said quietly.  “I’ll do whatever I need to do.”

To make it stop.  He wished he could promise her that was possible.  None of them had any idea how this was really going to work.

He refused to let “if” sneak into that sentence.  “Okay.  Let’s roll, then.  Why don’t you walk me through how it feels when your magic hits?”

He gave her credit—her mental wince didn’t show at all on the outside.

Damn.  Jamie studied Hannah’s face and went with his gut.  “Want the truth?  Precog sucks.”

Hannah stared.  Gulped.  Let out a shaky exhale.  “Yeah.”

There was a moment in every teaching relationship where trust was born.  Even when the trainer was sometimes a bumbling idiot.  Jamie sent her a lopsided grin.  “If I could, I’d have deep-sixed mine a long time ago.  Total pain in the ass.”

His mother’s snorting mental laughter rang in his head. 
It’s a little more than that for her, my dear.

It was.  But damned if he was going to acknowledge that.  Jamie settled into his mat, suddenly far more sure of himself.  He’d picked up a thing or two teaching the world’s most powerful witchling.  When the magic was really big, sometimes you just had to pretend otherwise.  It was a lot easier to be the boss of something that didn’t loom quite so large.

He looked at Hannah and kept flying by the seat of his pants.  “When an episode comes, you try to control it, yeah?  Kick it to the curb?”

“At first.”  Hands worried the fabric of the loose pants she wore.  “I used to fight it more, but I never won, you know?  Now I mostly just—“

He waited through the hitching breaths, pretty sure she had to talk this through, for more reasons than one. 

She looked up again.  “I just try to hold on to who I am.”

God, he knew that feeling.  “Yeah.  It feels like a zombie invasion.”

That got a ghost of a smile.  Hannah studied him, head tilted to the left.  “Are you ever scared that the zombies won’t leave?”

There were so very many kinds of hell.  Jamie sucked up his pity—that wasn’t what she wanted now.  “I’m lucky.”  And he was, in so many ways he normally took entirely for granted. He gestured at his mom, who was reading a magazine in the back corner.  “I always had someone around who had beat back the zombies every time.”  Never once had he doubted that Jamie Sullivan would be whole and intact and sane when the precog left.

Hannah had never known that security. 

And now they had their starting place—he was going to help her find some.  He reached forward and took her hands.  “I’m going to show you something.” 

Carefully, gentle magic flowing from his fingers to hers, he lit up the channels that led to her gut.  A lesson learned from his wife.  “Feel that?”

Hannah nodded, confused, but curious.

“That’s your center.  Yogis believe that the soul lives there.  Not in your head, but tucked down there in your belly.”  Far away from the reaches of precog.  “They say you can find it with your breath.”  He hoped that didn’t sound as dumb as when he’d first heard it.

 His student smiled.  “Meditation.  I’ve tried that—it helps a little.  Dr. Max showed me.”

Dr. Max was the weirdest psychiatrist ever.  But it was going to make this lesson a much easier one.  “Okay, good.  So you know how to find your center and follow your breathing there?”

She was already doing it.  Show-off.  He grinned—she was more witch than she knew.  “Yeah, exactly like that.  A lot of witches try to control magic with their brains.  It works way better if you move to your gut and run things from there.”

Terror edged in around her very competent centering.  “I can’t control it.”

“For now, that’s not the goal.”  Partly because he had no freaking idea how to get there.  “The first step is just to make a safe place for you to run if an attack hits.  Pull down some blinds, don’t look out the windows.”  He waited for her to meet his gaze.  “So you’ll be sure that, every time, Hannah Kendrick will come out the other side an intact human being.”

She got it, he could see that.  But she wasn’t at all convinced it was possible.

He hammered down on the part of his head that entirely agreed with her.

There was only one way to find out.

-o0o-

“Let’s run a little test.”

Hannah tried not to panic.  Nothing about what happened in her brain was little.

“Mom’s going to be in charge of that.”  The calm in Jamie’s voice was almost convincing.  “She’ll let the clamp off a tiny little bit.  Just enough to get some baby precog moving.”

Retha smiled from the corner.  “Got it.”  Like she’d been asked to pour the milk or something.

Jamie reached out his hands again, doing the magical thing that helped light up her gut.  “Your job is to find your center and go there.  Don’t fight the precog, and breathe out the fear.  I’ll be helping you, just like this.”

Hannah hushed the gibbering part of her mind that wanted to run back to Chrysalis House and the closet full of sedatives.  She stared at Jamie’s hands and tried to believe that a little air moving in and out of her lungs was the key to staying sane.

“Not the key,” he said, flashing her an easy smile.  “Just the beginning.  A stable place to shelter in the storm.  Then we’ll figure out how to wrangle the lightning.”

A random tidbit from a long-ago plane flight bubbled to the surface.  “Put on your oxygen mask when the plane’s going down, huh?”  She’d always thought that was dumb.  Hitting the ground at several hundred miles an hour still made you dead, oxygen or not.

  Jamie grinned.  “You’d like my brother Matt.  He’s a pessimist too.”

It wasn’t pessimistic to be scared of something that had crashed every time you’d flown for the last twelve years.  “You’re assuming I can fly a plane.”

“You already have.”  His eyes insisted that she look, listen.  “Precog’s kind of like a freight train, right?  Fast and huge and if you stand on the tracks, you’re gonna get squished.”

From one form of disaster to another.  It tickled her morbid sense of humor.  “You’re really comforting, you know that?”

“I try.”  He made a face at his mother chuckling in her corner.  “So the deal is, we don’t stand in front of the train.  We get smart.  Right now, we get off the rails.  Later, we maybe move the tracks, or steal some of the coal from the engine car, or put a sexy girl train in the field beside the track.”

This time, Retha’s laughter boomed through the entire studio.  “I trust that you give my grandson an edited version of that speech.”

Jamie grinned.  “Usually.”  He looked back at Hannah again.  “So that’s the end game here.  We find ways to influence your magic enough to protect the important stuff.”

Starting with coming out the other side knowing her own name.

Hannah clutched her knees, not at all sure she had the sheer guts to go through with this.  And felt calm, easy reassurance floating from the woman who had lived through precog and the raising of seven children. 
Of course you do, dear.  You stayed sane and quite lovely through twelve years of this.  A small sneeze this afternoon is only going to tire you out a stitch.
 Retha patted her bag, eyes twinkling.  “And when you’re done, I have cookies.”

Jamie looked skeptical.  “Ones someone else made, I hope.”

His mother laughed.  “Who said you get any?”

Hannah soaked in their irrepressible normalcy, tucking it deep into the place in her gut where souls apparently ran to hide.  And then, trying not to choke on her fear, she closed her eyes and waited for the dialed-down version of Armageddon to begin.