A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) (3 page)

If the second weren’t true, they’d be bringing her home, sane or not.

Moira returned her gaze with eyes that saw everything.  “It will be terribly difficult to look.”

The time to worry about that wasn’t now.  She’d wimp out if she thought about it too hard.  “I can do it.”  And if she found what Moira feared, she’d be dealing with a herd of charging Sullivans, too.  Lauren focused on the one thing they knew to be true.  “She asked for help.”  Surely that was a sign of something positive.

“Aye.  It’s a rare patient who has that much wisdom.”  Moira almost managed a smile. 

So many needs, tugging.  Yanking.  Her husband, ready to make a Devin Sullivan-sized hole in a brick wall.  Nell and Jamie, treading water in the horror for ten minutes longer than the rest of them.  And the one they’d leave behind. 

Lauren started with the last, crouching down in front of the honorary grandmother of them all.  “You’d know best what kind of space she would find comforting.  Why don’t you set that up?  Wake up some people if you need them.”  There wasn’t a person alive who wouldn’t jump at Moira’s call. 

Green eyes latched on to the task.  “At Jamie’s house, I think.  Nat and Kenna have already come to the inn, and the space is welcoming and well guarded.”

Meant to keep one toddler and her wild magic safe.  That would work. 

Lauren closed her eyes, running through what little plan they had one more time.  And finally saw the red warning lights flashing behind her eyelids.  She slammed down her mind barriers for a moment, trying to focus.  Trying to grab the loose end of string that led to the core of whatever was trying to get her attention.

Her instincts were screaming—and she’d been ignoring them.  Too distraught by two words written on a computer screen and the thought of some poor mind witch tortured in yellow, flowery hell.

Jamie’s well-named Witch Extraction Team ready to charge into action, armed with enough magic to blow up half the state.

And it wasn’t the right thing to do. 

Lauren held up her hand, willing coffee, instincts, and the drumming need in the room all to take a tiny step backward.  “Wait.”

They reined themselves in a notch, simply because she asked—but not a single one of them liked it.

“We’re not thinking straight.”  She was becoming surer by the second.  “We can’t just invade in the middle of the night and grab some woman who might have left a message in the computer.”

“Why the hell not?”  Devin’s mind held the oddest mix of general-at-the-ready and confused little boy.

And she desperately loved them both.  “We know nothing about Hannah or her magic.  Remember Beth?  We didn’t know how to meet her needs at first, and we caused damage.  Let’s not do that again.”

Devin waved at Jamie’s computer screen, incensed.  “You think that place is taking good care of her?”

“Maybe.”  She let the love shine in her eyes.  “We don’t know that, either.  We’ll go—but in daylight.  With a plan.”  Inspiration struck.  “Maybe Tabitha knows something about this place.”  About the people who had a witch in their clutches and half the might of Witch Central ready to storm their gates.

It was Jamie who finally nodded.  “She has a lot of respect from the psychology types.”

The blazing fire in several sets of eyes was banking.  She wasn’t totally crazy.  Lauren took a breath.  “I’ll call her.”  After the sun came up.

“Daniel can dig.”  Nell’s mind was still taut.  Ready.

And smart.  “Great.  He can dig, Tabitha can reach out, Moira can ready a place for Hannah.”  Lauren could feel her nerves steadying.  This was stuff she knew how to do.  “I’ll go make coffee.”

One more piece.  She turned around, nearly colliding with the bulk that was her husband, and let her mind reach for his.  “You figure out how to extract her if the easy way fails.”

“Okay.”  Her husband’s tone was level.  Almost subdued.

It fooled no one.  If they found a witch in hell, Devin Sullivan would be the first one through the door. 

Every wonderful inch of him.

-o0o-

A lot of people had crawled back under their covers—but Devin suspected very few would be getting any more sleep this night.

There were scary monsters that lived under the bed of every witch, and one of them had just come out.  Magic misunderstood.  A witch imprisoned because of what ran in her veins.

The need to be a force for freedom and justice still ran hot through his.  Held in check, barely, by the reasonable eyes and dogged passion of the woman he loved.  Lauren had only asked for a few hours. 

Realistically, he knew that would make little difference to the witch known only as Hannah.  She probably slept, entirely unaware of the furor that six letters on a computer screen had caused in the middle of the night.

It was the rest of them who were hurting, tied up in knots by the need and the ability to do something—and the small, insistent voice telling them it wasn’t yet time.

He grinned, remembering the fire in his wife’s eyes.  There were very few people in the world who could stare down a group of Sullivans over a cup of coffee and quietly take over.  Lauren had done it in two sentences.  And unfortunately for his need to storm around like an avenging comic-book hero, she’d made deeply frustrating sense.

Ah, well.  Maybe he could convince his businesslike planner to wear a superhero cape while she made phone calls and tugged on strings.

It wouldn’t settle the fire in his belly any—but it might give it a different outlet.

-o0o-

Lauren considered the pint of Cherries Garcia in her hand.  It probably wasn’t the right offering to try to calm a tiger, but it was the best she had.

She walked into the living room where her tiger sat in an armchair, looking out the window at the early dawn seas.  His pose might even fool a lesser woman.  “Ice cream?”

“We still have some left?”  Devin turned around in the chair, grinning.  “I figured my nieces totaled your stash last night.”

She was smarter than three ten-year-olds.  “I have more than one stash.”  Which was a good thing, because Shay in particular had excellent ice-cream-stalking skills.  Lauren made her way across the remnants of a hotly contested game of Settlers of Catan and took a seat in her husband’s lap.

Strong arms wrapped around her, the kind that were built for rescuing damsels in distress.  In any other era, Devin Sullivan would have been a knight in shining armor.

She planted a kiss on his forehead.  He hadn’t married a damsel, distressed or otherwise.  “I’ll call Tabitha in an hour.  The wheels are turning as quickly as they can, love.”  And if it turned out that Hannah needed rescuing, the bat signal was only a finger swipe away.

“I know.”  And he did.  Trust wasn’t the issue here.  His tiger state was one part reckless soul and two parts enormous empathy.  “It’s just hard to be patient.  That could be one of us in there.”

And that was why she desperately needed the Cherries Garcia, even if he didn’t.  “Maybe we should have just gone in.”

The tiger leaped—she could see it in his eyes.  And then Devin caught it by the chin hairs.  He took the pint out of her hands, set it on the side table, and cupped her cheeks in his hands, a giant finding his gentle.  “There’s no one better and more capable who could be working to get her out.  We all know that.”  His eyes searched hers, making sure she knew it too.

She would do her best.  And they would still be stumbling around in the dark.  Lauren sighed and cuddled into his chest.  She was savvy, skilled, loaded up on coffee and ice cream, and had the might of Witch Central at her back.  That would have to be enough.

Right after she curled up in her husband’s strength for a while.

Chapter 3

“You’re quiet this morning.”

Hannah didn’t look away from the window.  The raindrops slowly making their way down the pane of glass were soothing.  They flowed, content—their futures weren’t in doubt.

Dr. Max took a seat on the chair beside her.  “That was a pretty bad one.”

Her attacks—they didn’t know what else to call them.  Hannah sighed and wished she could join the raindrops on their eternal cycle of falling and then rising again into the mists of the sky.  She’d had strange dreams—the sedatives always did that.  “I made it a whole month without one this time.”  Thirty-two days, sixteen hours, eleven minutes.

“I know.”   The empathy in his voice had always been able to touch her—and today it carried the same frustration that hammered her soul.  They’d run out of ideas.

She ran her finger down the inside of the windowpane, tracking a greedy, fat droplet as it made its way down her field of vision.  “It’s not Jessica’s fault.”  The attendant was new.  She hadn’t understood the protocols. 

No visitors.  No new people without photographs first.  No words on first contact, and absolutely no visual contact from anyone she hadn’t known for months and months.

The rules, worked out through painful trial and error, that kept Hannah Kendrick somewhere near sane.

Most days.  New faces were the biggest trigger, but not the only one.  Sometimes the attacks came for no reason at all.

“She can’t work here if she can’t stick to protocol.”  Dr. Max’s voice held steel now.  He was very protective of his patients.  “You’re not the only one who needs that kind of attention to detail.”

Truth.  Harvey freaked out if his white laundry touched his red socks.  Belinda had to be greeted with a song, preferably something cheerful and childlike.  Mason panicked if anyone turned off the lights.  “She’s new—she’ll learn.”  The good ones did—but they were hard to find for what the scrimpy budgets could afford to pay.  The rest left, exhausted in days or hours by the realities of Chrysalis House’s inhabitants.

Hannah imagined they drowned in the hopelessness.

But not Dr. Max.  Like the little engine in a book of distant memory, he never gave up.

His hand touched her shoulder.  “There’s a new drug.”

She’d learned long ago not to make a wish.  “Will it work?”

“Probably not.”  He’d learned long ago that what she wanted most was honesty.  “But it might.”

“Side effects?”

He sighed.  “Bad.  And fairly likely.”

Not a surprise—she’d long since tried all the less-evil drugs.  “Maybe later.”  She didn’t have the strength today.  The side effects, she could handle.  The trickle of hope that showed up every time they tried something new, that refused to die in the face of overwhelming evidence—that, she couldn’t deal with.  Not today.

Today, she simply needed to be quiet and watch the rain.

“If you need me …”  His words trailed off as he stood up.

She turned away from the window.  He deserved that much.  Her face crinkled into a smile for the one man who had always thought Hannah Kendrick was worth saving.  “I know where to find you.”

His eyes gladdened.  “Come see me later.  Sara made me some new drawings.  My wife says one might be a dragon.”

This time, the smile was genuine—her hold on the real world was tenuous, but she was pretty sure his daughter’s three-year-old art skills weren’t up to scales and wings.  “I’ll come.  I have some weaving to do first.”

A small play blanket for the treasured doll of a girl who might draw dragons one day—and who made her father’s eyes light with joy.

Hannah turned back to the window, letting the raindrops be her tears.  And refused to wish for a future that could never be.

-o0o-

Lauren stood at the gate to Chrysalis House and looked around.  She knew how to evaluate a property from the street.  This one had excellent curb appeal.  Welcoming yellows dressed the surfaces of a well-maintained building.  Gardens full of whimsy and color—the kind that were the product of a gardener’s love, not just good landscaping.  Private little nooks and crannies in the yard, windows with a pretty view. 

It felt almost homey.

Tabitha smiled gently beside her.  “Some of what you fear does live inside those doors—but they work very hard to make a comfortable environment for the people here.”

She could see that.  “I guess my ideas about mental institutions are stuck somewhere in the last century.”

“Oh, those still exist.”  Tab’s voice was sad now.  “And we always seem to invent new ways to exclude and dehumanize those amongst us who are fragile.”

Lauren reached for the arm of the woman who made strides with fragile children every day.  She wasn’t the only one who was going to find this visit very difficult—Tabitha had a strong dose of the empathetic side of mind magic.  “One at a time.  We help one person at a time.”

Tab smiled.  “Let’s go learn what we can about Hannah.”

The front doors of Chrysalis House opened and a man stepped out, his body language open and energetic.  “Tab!  Great to see you again.”  He pushed several buttons on a remote in his hand and the gate swung open.

Lauren noted the squeaking and rumbling as it did—and almost missed the very discreet electronic lasers.  Security was tighter than it looked. 

Tabitha had followed her gaze.
 Safety isn’t an easy issue. I can promise you the people who live here are as free as possible.  He would tolerate nothing less.