A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) (8 page)

He parked his motorcycle to the left of the dilapidated building Dev optimistically called a woodshed and smiled at his mother, who was climbing out of her car.  Any time you could be only a few seconds behind Retha Sullivan was a good day.  “Hey, Mom.”

She didn’t answer, walking over for a quick hug instead.

Damn.  This was shaking all of them up.  “Relax.  She probably saw you and Dad chilling out with Melvin and Vero in Tahiti.”

The glare was pure Mom.  As was the punch in the shoulder.  “Are you calling me old?”

“Mom, quit beating up on Jamie.”  The voice from the door was amused—and very glad to see them.  Devin held up a steaming mug.  “Lauren just brewed some kind of fancy-schmancy coffee.  Come on in.”

Devin’s wife had made it her personal mission to upgrade the coffee-bean appreciation of the entire Sullivan clan.  Nobody was complaining.  Jamie hit the doorstep a half-step behind his mother and spoke under his breath.  “How’s she doing?”

“She still hears just fine,” said Lauren dryly, stepping out of the cottage’s tiny kitchen.  “If anyone wants herbal tea instead, I can probably find some.”

Two faces looked at her suspiciously.

Lauren grinned.  “Okay, caffeine it is.  Coming right up.”

Jamie wandered into the living room.  Renovations had turned the small cottage’s main space into a thing of airy beauty, and some of the denizens of Witch Central had been hard at work on the gardens.  It felt like a gazebo with a view and the world’s most comfortable couches.

As a home, it was quirky and unusual—and it suited his brother and Lauren down to the ground.

Jamie plunked down in an unoccupied chair and eyed Devin.  Wound pretty tightly.  Shit.

Retha bumped her wildest son’s legs off the couch and then leaned over and kissed his cheek.  Mom instincts coming to the same conclusion. 

Lauren walked in, tray loaded with coffee mugs and something suspiciously green.  Jamie leaned in as she set it down.  “What on earth is that?”

“Poison.”  Lauren picked up a meatball on a toothpick and dipped it into the green stuff.  “You won’t like it.”

He didn’t eat green stuff or food on toothpicks.  Usually.  Lunch had been a long time ago, and Kenna had eaten half his spaghetti.  He sniffed.  Meat.  It probably wouldn’t kill him.

Lauren’s face stayed poker straight as he stabbed one of the meatballs, but her mind was totally giggling.  He scowled and contemplated the green stuff.  Smelled like toothpaste.

“It’s mint pesto.”  A meatball zoomed around his and dove into the sauce.  Devin tossed it back, chomping in satisfaction.  “Moira showed me how to make it.  It’s pretty good.”

Devin
was getting cooking lessons?  Jamie shook his head, only partly in jest.  “Marriage has changed you, bro.”  However, what didn’t kill one Sullivan brother probably wouldn’t hurt any of the others.  He dunked his meatball and manned up. 

It wasn’t half bad, so long as you pretended it wasn’t green.

It took half the plate of meatballs to realize that they weren’t all eating.  Retha was sitting back, uncharacteristically quiet, watching Lauren.  And her mind barriers were locked down tight.  Jamie knocked a mental tendril on her walls. 
What’s up, Mom? 

Your brother chose very well.

The vote on that had been unanimous for a long time.
 You think she got hit with something.

Retha’s eyes were steady and sad. 
Don’t you?

I did.
  Lauren’s mindvoice was nonchalant. 
And if you finish up your meatballs, I might even tell you. 

Devin rolled his eyes.  “Cut it out, guys.  Three mind witches in the room and your manners go all to hell.”

“Four.  And it wasn’t me.”  Nell walked in from the hall and eyed the gathering.  “What’s going on?”

Jamie grinned—Sullivan instincts for the win.  “Mom says I’m a better cook than Dev.”  He caught the predictable meatball his brother tossed at his head.  No one knew better than his family how to combat the heaviness and responsibility that came with powerful magics.  And one of their favorite tools was immaturity.

There are others?
asked Retha dryly, finally reaching for a meatball.

There were.  Food.  And loyalty.

And picking some really awesome people to stand at their sides. 

-o0o-

Any more supportive, leaky mind thoughts and she was going to dissolve into ooze on her living room floor.  Lauren choked down one more meatball and decided it was time to talk about the elephant in the room. 

She laced her fingers with Devin’s, looking over at the woman who had more experience with precog than anyone living.  And asked the question that had been haunting her for hours.  “How much of it is true?”  Not theory anymore—her heart screamed with the need to know.

Sorrow and courage hit Retha’s eyes in equal parts.  “Sometimes all of it.  Sometimes none.  There is no way to be sure.”

That had sounded like a reasonable answer yesterday.  Now, sitting in a room that smelled of meatballs and love, her mind still tumbling with visions that felt all-too-terribly real, it gave Lauren no comfort at all.

Her mother-in-law leaned forward, mindtouch as gentle as that of her fingers.  “Start at the beginning, my love.  It will be lighter if you share it.”

That was a decision still to be made.  Lauren took a deep breath.  “I had a few seconds to read Hannah when they first brought us into the room.  She was weaving.”  The tapestry had been beautiful.  Simple and intricate at the same time, and full of vibrant color.  She pushed an image out to the others.

“She reaches for life,” Retha murmured.

That’s exactly how it had felt.  “She has courage.  Boatloads of it.”  And when the visions had hit, Hannah’s hands clutched her weaving.  “I think it anchors her.  A very visual, tactile way to find the present.  The real one.”  Even talking about possible futures was tricky—the English language lacked words for the temporal knot that was precog.

It had felt so very, perilously real.

“She heard us before she saw us.”  The details were critical, and Lauren had tried hard to hold on to them through the maelstrom that followed.  “And Tabitha made mind contact.  The visions didn’t come until she looked at us.”

“Good.  You learned something about her triggers.”

“She might have more than one,” said Jamie darkly.

“Perhaps.”  Retha didn’t move, but the love she pushed to her son was palpable—and almost as appreciated as Nell’s elbow in his ribs.  “But knowing that mindtouch doesn’t trigger an episode is very useful.”  She paused.  “Tabitha was brave to try that.”

They’d been shaking in their boots.  “We did what we needed to do.”

Her husband’s hands were firm and warm.  And nearly twitching—he sucked at sitting still and waiting.  Lauren leaned into him, enjoying his solid bulk.

Real.

“She looked at Tab first.  I had mind barriers up on everyone in the room, just like we planned.”  Fairly simple magic until all hell broke loose.  “We thought it had worked, at first.  Hannah smiled, said hello.  And you could see this massive relief on her face.”

It was Nell who led them into the next horror.  “And then she looked at you.”

“Yeah.”  Lauren’s mouth was dry as dust at the memory.  “I dropped the barriers on everyone else in the room.  Tried to lock down hers and mine.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” said Retha gently.  “If her trigger is visual, simply seeing your face would have been enough.”

“I tried—” Lauren paused, needing to drag what she’d done next into the light.  “I tried to convince her mind it couldn’t see me.”  A perilous tug-of-war, full of ethical quandary, and one that Hannah had understood.  “She knew what I was doing.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow.  “She fought you?”

“No.”  She’d tried to help.  “Her mind is strong.  I could feel her tracing the lines in her weaving.  Pushing the visions away.  She isn’t weak.”

“Neither am I.”  Retha’s words were oddly flat.  “And I’ve never been able to make a vision go away.  Not one.  Not ever.”

The punch of those words in the room was deadly.  All three of her children stared in varying degrees of shock. 

“It’s awful.  To lose control of your own brain like that—it’s awful.”  The words came one at a time, stretched thin.  “Even when what you see makes you happy.  The loss of self is a violation.  Every time.”

Lauren shuddered—even secondhand, it had been a violation.  “She saw me.  And Devin.”  The warm bulk of chest behind her breathed.  He’d heard some shattered, incoherent pieces of this when she’d first gotten home.  “On a beach somewhere.”

“There’s a shocker.”  Jamie’s teasing tone was rusty, like he hadn’t brought it out for a while.  “My brother, hanging out near the water.”

It hadn’t been California water.  She looked at Jamie.  Time for at least some of the truth.  “And something else.  I was sitting with Nat, holding a baby that looked like you.”  Her heart squeezed.  “Or Devin.”

“Aw, shit.”  His mind exploded with aching empathy. 

He understood.  Lauren breathed out, the part of her that mourned a tiny baby, seen for an instant, feeling a little less crazy.  “It’s probably the little boy you’ll build a snowman with.”  Leftovers from Jamie’s precog vision the first time he’d seen Nat.

“Maybe.”  His eyes were as gentle as she’d ever seen them.

Dammit.  She hadn’t wanted a child.  Not really, not yet.  Not until the moment she’d felt herself holding the tiny baby that might be hers and simply loved.

Devin’s hand stroked her arm in the same quiet rhythm he’d been using all evening.  Lauren swallowed again.  “There was more, but I can’t talk about it yet.”

The Sullivans didn’t say things like that. 

She closed her eyes.  In some things, she was not yet a Sullivan.

Oh, baloney.
  Retha’s mindvoice was laced with laughter and a good swift kick in the pants. 
All my children have kept secrets and been foolishly courageous.  You fit right in, sweetheart.

Some odd bubble around Lauren burst, the mess that she had been holding at bay landing full force on her bruised soul.  And charging right behind it, the tangible, visceral, no-holds-barred love of the clan Sullivan.  Lauren sat for a long time, wrapped in her husband’s arms and the invincible support of three veterans of magic’s wars.

When she finally opened her eyes, the colors in the room loomed oddly vivid.  She let the gratitude in her mind speak for itself.

“Goofball.  What did you expect?”  Nell rolled her eyes and reached for a cookie.  Veterans, getting back to business.  “So, Hannah had visions.  Did she conk out like Jamie here, or just get all hungry, like Mom?”

Jamie ported the plate of cookies away from his sister’s reach.  “I don’t conk out.  Usually.”

“No.  We, um—” They were doing this for her benefit.  Giving her a chance to think, report, feel competent.  Lauren searched for words to explain the visceral mindwar that had happened next.  “She made them go away.  The visions.  Not all the way, and she ran away before it was totally done.”

Jamie’s eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling.  “Seriously?  Can I hire you?”

Not for all the spaghetti sauce in the world.  “I don’t know if I could do it again.”  It had been like trying to stuff a million pounds of toothpaste back into one tiny tube.  “And she did most of the work.”

“Like hell she did.”  Retha grabbed the cookie plate from her son and stuffed it into Lauren’s lap.  “No wonder your channels feel singed.”

Lauren felt Devin rise up in protest.  “I checked her.  Her channels are fine.”

“They’re not.”  The Sullivan family matriarch pulled out her phone.  “She had walls up around the worst of it.  We need a healer.  Now.”

“Moira and Sophie are busy.”  Lauren suddenly felt the day sucking her down a drain.  “Chicken pox.”

Retha looked at Nell—and two of the world’s toughest moms made a very quick decision.

Lauren waited, exhaustion suddenly seeping in every which way.  She’d just needed enough love to let it land. 

-o0o-

“You are in so much trouble.”

Nell raised an eyebrow as her daughter landed in the middle of the living room, mind spewing healer indignation.  “Which ones of us?”

Ginia glared.  “All of you.  I can feel her channels yelling from here.”  She sat down by Lauren, hands gentler than her voice.  “How come you’re so silly, hmm?  Why did nobody come get me hours ago?”

Time to assert some maternal authority.  “We were hoping not to need you, sweetie.  We have a bit of a situation and we didn’t want to involve you unless we had to.”

“Oh, you mean the crazy witch?”  Ginia was already digging in her potions bag.  “Is she okay?”

Shit.  Once upon a time, they’d actually been able to keep a secret from the smaller inhabitants of Witch Central.  “We don’t know yet.”

Her daughter was frowning at her patient again.  “What happened to you, anyhow?  When Aervyn cooks your channels, they don’t usually feel like this.”  Hands swept in circles an inch over Lauren’s head.  “They’re all bumpy.  Did the crazy witch do this to you?”

“She’s not crazy,” said Lauren, careful not to move.  “She’s got precog, just like your Gramma Retha and Uncle Jamie.”

Nell was often proud of her daughters—but watching Ginia’s temper ramp up in three seconds flat made her heart dance. 

Fire flashed in their young healer’s eyes.  “They locked her up for being a witch?”

“No, lovey.”  Nell knew something about asking warriors to stand down.  “We don’t think she can control her precog.  She’s in a safe place right now, with people who care about her.”  She glanced at Lauren, making sure that was still the consensus.

“Yup.  She’s a witch, but she also might not be okay out in the world right now.”  Lauren cuddled her niece into her side.  “You’d like Dr. Max.  He’s funny, and he thinks most doctors are pretty dumb.  And he really likes Hannah.”

“Is he a witch?”  Ginia sounded entirely skeptical.

“No.  But he’s a healer.  A good man who wants to help her get better.”

“Having magic isn’t a sickness.”  Ninety pounds of determined girl took her stand.  “If she can’t control her magic, she needs witches, not doctors, even if they’re really nice ones.”