A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) (2 page)

Nell pulled up the log files—the enormous, bloated, coma-inducing scroll of lines that tracked every action ever taken anywhere on the Sullivan servers.  Well used to log-file drudgery, she isolated records for the last week and ran a search. 

Nothing.

Crap.  Instincts yelling now, Nell grabbed several billion lines of log-file data. 
Look harder, dammit. 
Mentally berating the computer didn’t make it work any faster, but it gave her impatience something to do.

She imagined that the computer groaned in reply—even Sullivan computing power wasn’t thrilled about trying to digest that many lines of data.  Her eyes scanned as the servers worked, looking for a needle in a haystack.

Avoiding the two words on her laptop screen.

When the answer finally popped up, it did nothing to relax the knot in her stomach.

Two words, confirmed.  Typed in the dead of night from an IP address the servers didn’t recognize.  Not Witch Central.  Not Realm.

Instincts flaring, she pulled up a browser tab and ran a reverse IP lookup, hammering that result into Google.

And stared at the answer, unease curdling into horror.

Her next move was for her iPhone and its bat signal.

They had a witch emergency.

-o0o-

All clear.

Hannah tiptoed down the quiet, dark hallway and remembered the game she’d played with her brother.  She’d always been the scout, he’d been the attack force.  Mom had made them tinfoil walkie-talkies to use.

Her hands clenched, warding off the memories.  Attacks were bad enough without the very real bits of her history they seemed to dredge up.  Life
before
.

Before something alien and awful had invaded her brain.

That wasn’t something she said out loud anymore.  Crazy people were supposed to embrace the invaders, stop seeing them as
other
.  The first step toward mental health.

Funny how all the people who said that weren’t crazy.

She wasn’t going to be making friends with shimmering images of dead babies anytime soon.

The new attendant wasn’t going to be working Hannah’s wing of Chrysalis House anytime soon, either.  Dr. Max’s eyes had still been furious when the sedatives had worn off twelve hours later.  Fury that had bled to puzzlement when she’d asked if the attendant was pregnant.

At fifteen, she’d believed the images were visions—a preview of things to come.  She’d clung to her brother, begging him not to get in the car or climb the tree or sixteen other ways she’d seen him die.  Told him one day, blushing eleven shades of red, that he would marry a woman with dimples and blue eyes and a tiger ring on her toe.

It wasn’t long after that when her blips, her tiny, fascinating glimpses of what she’d thought was the future, had turned into an avalanche of nightmare. 

Her brother’s face had been both happy and sad, several years ago now, when he’d come to tell her about his new wife.  A woman with no dimples or toe rings.

At least the blue-eyes part had been right.

Hannah turned the handle on the computer-room door very slowly.  In the wee hours of the night, stealth always felt appropriate, even if she was free to roam.  Dr. Max’s orders, along with moving heaven and earth to keep enough doors unlocked for her to do it—most people weren’t big on crazy people having mobility.

There was a freedom in the night.  No new attendants accidentally strolling through doorways.  And the computer room, a busy, clacking place by day, was always empty.

She’d come every night for a month, drawn by a fragment of dream she couldn’t shake. 

Hannah sat down at the far-corner terminal, typing in the series of passwords and codes that would take her to her specially restricted corner of the Internet.  Devoid of pictures, stripped of anything visual that might trigger her particular brand of crazy.  Nothing kept the attacks away all the time—but the convoluted rules they’d worked out made them come less often.

She touched her mouse to the purple dot in the top right corner—a little splash of color that violated all the rules.  It had simply shown up one day, following her around the anonymous interwebs.

And then she’d dreamed.  Of the two words she would type, and the two women who would come.

They felt so very real.  Just like the woman with dimples her brother had never married.

A stray bolt of fury blasted through Hannah’s chest, puncturing the breath she’d been holding.  And then died, fizzling in the gray, dark waters of long-term despair.

When you were crazy, “real” was a very suspect term.

She opened the little black screen where she’d typed the two words.  And deleted them.

Chapter 2

“Breathe,” said Jamie, knowing full well it wouldn’t work. 

His sister only tightened her mind barriers.  Fighter, ready for battle. 

Unfortunately, they weren’t sure who the enemy was just yet.  “Everyone will be here soon.”  It had taken all of ten minutes to wake up half of Witch Central in the middle of the night, and Nell had paced for all ten of them.

He knew why—the horror in her brain echoed in his own gut.

Devin transported in, eyes bright and curious.  His wife, cuddled at his side, looked a whole lot sleepier. Jamie handed her a mug of coffee—they needed Lauren’s brain online, and that never happened until at least her second dose.

Moira landed on the couch of the Witches’ Lounge, cup of tea in her hand.  She’d been the only one already awake when he’d sent out the bat signal—morning came earlier in Nova Scotia.  Their elder witch nodded in greeting and got straight to the point.  “Sophie’s at a birth, but Marcus can come if we need him.”

Hopefully not.  Marcus had been the only one with his phone anywhere near his sleeping person, but waking up a guy two days before his wedding was bad enough.  Dragging him off on a witch rescue mission would probably draw the ire of half the women of witchdom.

Hardly,
sent Lauren wryly.

Good—her coffee was kicking in.  Jamie grinned. 
We menfolk have to hold tight to our fond stereotypes.

Her mind was getting sharper by the second. 
What’s going on?

Jamie looked at his sister.  Her story to tell, and they had enough people here to start telling it.

Nell surveyed the room.  “I was turning off the fetching spell, since we’re all headed to Fisher’s Cove for a few days.”

“A good plan.”  Moira’s voice was steady—an anchor in the coming storm.

“It was tracking someone.”

The tension in the room was already ratcheting up, thanks to mind magic, coffee, and plain old witch smarts.  Devin popped onto his feet, a man looking for action.  “Someone’s in trouble.”

“I don’t know that for sure.”  But every stitch of Nell believed otherwise, and her brothers knew it.  “There were two words trapped in the fetching code.”

Jamie pulled up a virtual screen so they could all read. 
HELP ME
.

The collective intake of breath could have sucked in a good portion of San Francisco Bay.  Dev stabbed his finger at the screen.  “Where?”

A couple of taps, and Jamie had Chrysalis House’s website onscreen.  “It came from here.”

Lauren looked at the attractive yellow building surrounded by flowers and sunshine.  “Where’s that?  Or what?”

Jamie had spent the last ten minutes figuring that out.  “It’s a very nice, very secure private facility—for the intractably mentally ill.”  He swallowed hard.  “People go in, but they don’t leave.  This is where you go if they can’t cure you and your family still has some money left.”

The horror that oozed over his bones was now traveling through every mind in the room.

Devin bounced on the balls of his feet, power already flowing from his fingertips.  “They’ve locked up a witch because they think she’s crazy?”  He spun around to Nell.  “What magic does she have?”

“I don’t know.  The fetching spell wasn’t in scanning mode.” 

“Mind magic, most likely.”  Lauren’s face was grim.  “They think she hears voices or something.”

That was their best guess.  Jamie nodded.  “Probably.  She could have some other stuff on the side, so we should be ready for that, too.”

Nell was standing beside Devin now.  Sullivans, ready to roll.  “I know her name is Hannah.  And I know she left that message almost three weeks ago.”

Three
weeks
.  Jamie’s stomach curdled.

“Okay.  Beam us in, Scotty.”  Devin’s easy tone belied the intensity of his mind—and the sharp excitement. 

Jamie sighed—his brother had needed something to do ever since he and Lauren got married.  He was going to jump into this with both feet and half of Berkeley.  “We don’t know what’s in there, Dev.”  Which was the only reason he hadn’t ported himself and Nell in there ten minutes ago.

“Sure we do.”  His brother’s casual words didn’t fool anyone.  “A witch who needs our help.”

Jamie felt the words on the screen slice into him again.  And then did what he usually did—took a metaphorical stand at his brother’s shoulder.  One witch extraction team, ready for departure.  They’d figure out the rest when they got there.  He looked over at the team leader.  In a crisis, there was no one better than Devin Sullivan.  “Okay.  Who goes?”

“You, to get us in.”  A general, readying his troops.  “Or out, if it comes to that.”

“Me.”  Lauren stopped her husband’s protest dead in its tracks with only a glance.  “You’ll want a mind witch who can read through walls.  And barrier Hannah if we need to.”

Images of nineteenth-century insane asylums flashed in Jamie’s mind.  Concrete and bars and a miasma of unhappiness.  Mind-witch hell.  He met Lauren’s eyes—and then quieted.  She knew. 

And she feared enough for the one inside the walls to go anyway.

“One more.”  Nell was mimicking Dev’s casual stance, but her mind was a coiled cobra.  “We’ll take Daniel.”

Jamie blinked.  Daniel was always a good man in a crisis, but teleporting was faster than hacking, and Nell usually left one Walker parent manning the home fires.  “Why?  I can get us in.” 

His sister rolled her eyes.  “Because, unlike the Sullivans, he knows how to plan an exit strategy.” 

Jamie just snorted as the room dissolved in laughter.  And blessed his sister’s sense of timing—a warrior who knew the power of humor before battle.

They had their team.  Jamie nodded and moved to Devin’s side, mentally running through a rucksack of items to take.

“You’ll take me as well,” said a firm voice from the couch. 

Like hell.  Jamie stepped forward, seeking the words to tell an old witch she had to stay home—and found Devin one step ahead of him.  His brother took a seat on the coffee table, one of Moira’s hands already in his.  “We’ll need you right here for when we bring her back.”

“No.”  Moira’s mind was implacable—and full of sadness.  “You’ll need someone along who knows if it’s safe for her to leave.”  She touched Devin’s cheek softly.  “She’s a witch, my brave boy—but she might also be too far gone to save.  She wouldn’t be the first.”

The last words came out in a whisper barely heard, but they eviscerated Jamie’s guts all the same.  And even his feeble mind powers could feel the source of Moira’s pain.  A young woman, with a face oddly familiar—and vacant, crazed eyes.

Her sister,
sent Lauren, mind drenched in sorrow.

Jamie stared.  He hadn’t known.

“Magic can be cruel,” said Moira, more audibly now.  “And the damage can’t always be reversed.”

Jamie tried to picture a world where leaving someone in a mental institution was a kindness—and shuddered.

“You’ll need a healer.”  The firmness was coming back to Moira’s voice.  “Sophie’s at a birth, and this is no place for a child to go.”

That much they could all agree on.  And whatever their elder witch lacked in magic, she more than made up for in mental strength.

Jamie reached for the plate of cookies.  If he was going to be porting little old ladies hither and yon, he’d be needing them.

Four hands met his at the plate.  Witches, preparing for battle.

-o0o-

They were back.

Hannah plastered herself to the bank of the river, afraid to step into the rushing waters of her dream.  Two women, speaking with Dr. Max out in the gardens.  Talking about her.

Darkness.  Inky, eternal blackness, and then words on a blank screen.  Words left by a soul who had somehow found a scrap of hope.  In her dream, she typed them out again.  And again.

HELP ME.

The women stood.  Leaving and not leaving.  This part of the dream never made any sense.

Their faces were kind—but that wasn’t why her dream-self watched.

It was their power.

-o0o-

Already, her mind was seeking. 
Hannah. 
Lauren tried to quiet her magic—Chrysalis House was a hundred miles away, nestled deep in the California hills.

She tried to stay in the here and now.  The plan had been made so quickly. 
Think.

Coffee powered her brain through the last words of the oldest witch in the room.  Hannah could be sick.  She sought out green eyes.  “We won’t need a healer.  I’ll know if she’s sane.  If she’s safe there.”