Fire Raiser (32 page)

Jamey decided that he’d probably lost too much blood to have enough for his brain cells to sort all this out with any degree of reliability. He kept his eyes shut and let things happen, reasoning quite correctly that he didn’t have much choice—still thinking,
Peaches?

Eighteen

“BIG KID,” EVAN REMARKED.

“Nine pounds if she’s an ounce.” Lulah held her up for inspection: a plump and yawning little face below a full head of waving reddish hair. “I’d say she’s full-term and then some. Which makes conception the second week of December.”

Not conception—implantation
, Evan didn’t say. He knew what he knew, but he’d have to confirm it in various ways—including the testimony of the girl. That, however, might prove problematical. Nicky had told him that aside from shrieking at Holly, she hadn’t uttered a sound. Not even during labor. Lachlan didn’t make the mistake of thinking that maybe childbirth didn’t hurt that much after all. A kid this size, half again as large as either of the twins? He wasn’t about to mention that, either. The implication that Bella and Kirby had perhaps been a little scrawny at birth would not go over well with their mother.

“I hate to wake her,” Nicky said. “But if you’ve really found us another way out of here . . .”

“I found another way
in
,” Alec corrected.

“In, out—don’t be pedantic.”

“They are occasionally not the same.”

“You guys ought to take this act on the road,” Evan observed. “And I mean that literally, pedantically, and urgently.”

They were all gathered in the bedroom, which, like the stairwell, lacked shadows. Every time lightning flared outside the dormer window, sometimes brightly enough to delineate every leaf on the huge old oak nearby, his brain expected the light in the room to change. It didn’t. Neither was there any thunder, and although he could see the rain he couldn’t hear it clattering against the window or the roof.

The girl lay sleeping in the freshly made bed. With her round cheeks, soft mouth, and her hair in two loose braids, she looked hardly more than a child herself. Nick had also mentioned that halfway through the proceedings—which had proceeded rapidly indeed—he had stopped translating Lulah’s instructions into Hungarian. The girl obviously understood what was required of her by way of breathing, pushing, and so on. But it had been
his
eyes she watched,
his
hands she clung to.

“I’m not sure if it was because I was speaking her language, or if it was my tone of voice—”

Evan grinned. “Probably she just fell helplessly in love with your adorable face.”

“Remind me again why we allowed Holly to marry you.”

“She and I deserve each other?”

“Ah. Of course. How silly of me to forget.”

Alec was busy putting clean sheets from the laundry basket onto a pair of thin mattresses taken from the gurneys down the hall. It was his plan to use them as stretchers for the girl and for Jamey. Somebody would have to carry the newborn. Her mother wanted nothing to do with her.

Nicky had described how shocked he and Lulah had been when she refused to hold her child, refused even to look at her. Lachlan gave him a brief, low-voiced explanation of how she had probably come to be pregnant. After a few choice Romany oaths, Nick had muttered that one could hardly blame her.

Cam was seated on the floor, watching Jamey sleep. The blood-soaked blanket that had replaced the blood-soaked bedspread had itself been replaced by another blanket, taken from the closet. It would take Jamey a few days to recover from the hemorrhaging—but that was all he would have to recover from. Lulah was adamant about getting him and the girl to Dr. Cutter, a fellow Witch to whom they could entrust the whole story, but Nick’s instincts had been correct. A fiber was indeed a fiber.

Evan supposed he should be able to accept things like this by now. But the chain of causation—from gunshot, to whatever the St. Michael medal had done to keep it from harming him, to the wound in Jamey’s leg—had shaken him. He took advantage of what Holly had given him, he admitted that. He’d be a fool not to. He just didn’t think about it all that much. And now this had happened, and if not for Cam—

What Cam had done tonight was staggering. Well, Evan told himself, from a non-Witch’s point of view, what else was magic but the determination to accomplish wildly improbable things?

A lot else. For the moment, it was getting eight adults and one infant the hell out of Westmoreland. Improbable, to say the least.

As Alec was finishing up the mattresses, he began describing the route they would be taking to get outside. “I came up through a little door at the back of the kitchen pantry. It was protected magically—rather recently, too, not more than a month or so—but not that difficult to open. Through that door, along about six feet of brick hallway, and right through a sliding wall panel. Easy as calling fire to a candlewick.”

“I’m absolutely thrilled to hear it,” Holly said dryly. “How did you know where to look for a staircase, and how come Lulah didn’t sense this door while we were on the way down to the clinic?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and Evan half-turned to look at him. Alec had always been the embodiment of debonair charm, with a twinkle in his brown eyes that mocked the Boston Brahmin sophistication of his upbringing. Right now he looked shaken as he glanced over at his partner.

“I lost Nicholas,” he said at last. “He wasn’t
there
anymore. That hasn’t happened more than twice in the last thirty-four years. I couldn’t sense him from the front of the house, so I walked around to the back. The kitchen door was open, nobody was in there, and I did some exploring. As for why Lulah didn’t find the door—it’s not spelled. The kitchen entry is, but the way into the staircase isn’t. So there’s nothing to be sensed—just a mechanism with weights to slide the panel aside. Once I was in—”

“—I nearly fell over with the shock,” Nick finished for him.

“We must’ve just missed you in the stairwell,” Holly mused.

“Quite likely.”

Lachlan reflected on something Louvena had said tonight—that life was all in the timing. A few minutes, an hour . . . twelve years. . . . Heglanced over at Cam and Jamey, noting with a slight smile that Holly wouldn’t have to push anymore. Catching her eye, he nodded at the pair, and she winked, rocking slowly from side to side with a tiny grin teasing her lips, the laptop clutched to her chest.

Timing. The church fires. Westmoreland Inn, Spa and Whorehouse. Trafficked children. He walked over to the bed, where the new mother lay sleeping. When Nick touched her shoulder she came awake very suddenly, like one who has trained herself to instant alertness. She sat up, biting her lip, and then her expression smoothed into blankness. She looked up at Nick for a moment, but if she was reassured by his calm smile it didn’t register in any muscle of her body.

She glanced around then—and reacted violently at the sight of so many other people in the room. Scooting back to cower against the headboard, she groped for Nicky’s hand. He took it, murmuring soothing things that made no impression. Lulah brought the baby over. The girl shook her head, long dark hair coming loose from the braids. Lulah backed away, frowning.

“Make yourself useful,” Alec said, tossing a pillow at Holly. She relinquished the laptop and climbed to her feet, scrounging in the basket of clean sheets. The girl’s eyes lit on her—and she didn’t stop shouting until Holly threw the pillow and pillowcase at Cam and retreated into the hallway outside.

Cam gave a muffled yelp. He flung the pillow away and stared down at his hands. At the pillowcase, crumpled onto the rug. At the girl.

“Jesusgoddamn,” he breathed. “It’s her. It’s the same magic. Burns like a sonuvabitch—”

“Cam?” Jamey’s voice was weak but clear. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He returned to Jamey’s side. “Just relax. You’re gonna be fine.”

“Evan?” Alec insisted. “What’s he talking about?”

Something was putting itself together inside Cam’s head. What he wanted was to talk with Holly, trade ideas—however outlandish—argue it all out. But that couldn‘t happen here. “We need to leave. Now,” he told Alec. “Can you set up a ward or something on her?”

Dark eyes searched his for a long moment. “I’ll take your word for it.
Miklóshka?
A hand, if you please.”

He meant it literally, of course. Jamey had struggled up onto his elbows, despite Cam’s worried urging otherwise, and Lachlan could identify completely with the bewilderment in his face as Nick and Alec clasped hands and started to Work. In fact, Evan would have bet good money that by now Jamey was starting to recognize the difference between work and Work. He’d have to, if he wanted any kind of life with Cam. A long talk would be in order, Lachlan thought idly, regarding the ins, outs, ups, downs, and especially the sideways jolts of marrying a Witch—

“Evan—!”

He swung around to the door as he heard it slam shut. Holly leaned back heavily against it, shaking a little. The girl cried out fretfully, waking the baby, and Lulah began murmuring what Evan recognized as quieting spells used on his own children.

“Footsteps,” Holly told him. “Coming up the stairs. Just one set. I didn’t stick around to find out if it was Weiss or not, but—”

Was he arrogant enough to approach them alone? Was he powerful enough to take them on? Lachlan glanced over at two of his secret weapons. Alec and Nicky were oblivious in their own silent magical communion. Whatever they were doing to or for or with the girl, it wasn’t happening fast enough.

“Cam—those handcuffs—”

“What?”

“The strings, dammit! Hand one over! The thing with the knots!”

“She’s not evil,” he objected, even as he delved into his pants pocket. “This is for silence and sleep against somebody who’s—”

“I don’t give a shit if she’s the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary!”

Holly grabbed Cam’s elbow and yanked him to his feet. “I’ll distract her. You tie it around her finger. Jamey, stay put.”

She moved to the far side of the bed. Fury gushed from the girl like a broken dam in full flood. Total silence during childbirth, but the sight of Holly caused
this
? Lachlan pushed the thought aside and kept his gaze from flickering to Cam, who approached the bed with one of the knotted strings looped to tie around a finger. Holly was babbling something about settling down, not going to hurt you, everything will be all right, will you for the love of everything holy shut the fuck up—

Cam pounced. There was an abrupt, blessed silence.

Except for the voice echoing up the stairwell.

“Sheriff Lachlan! There is no escape! You are surrounded!”

Alec rubbed his forehead, grimacing. “What do you want to bet the next thing he says is ‘Come quietly and you won’t be harmed’?”

Nick also looked tired and headachy. “I vote for ‘It’s your only hope.’ ”

Jamey was swaying to his feet, crawling up the brass handles on the chest of drawers. “Weiss! What do you want?”

“Only the child! She’s all I want!”

“How did he know it’s a girl?” Holly asked.

“Why doesn’t he want any of the rest of us—meaning
you
?” Evan countered.

“Give her to me and you’ll be free to leave!”

Jamey laughed, his face ghost-pale. “I don’t think so!”

“Amniocentesis, I suppose. Still—”

“Shut up, Freckles,” Cam said. “Jamey, whatever stupid idea is going through your mind—”

“But if he’s alone, like Holly said—”

“Shut up, all of you.” Lulah marched over and handed Cam the sleeping baby. “Don’t drop her.” She beckoned Alec and Nicky with an imperious gesture. Lachlan found it reassuring that age and magical gifts had nothing to do with whether or not men obeyed this woman.

“Just the child, and you will walk free,” Weiss said from much closer to the door.

“Why her?” Jamey called out. “Why not me, or the sheriff, or his wife?”

Evan shot him an angry glare.

“Eloquent as you are, genial as the sheriff might be, and even taking account of Mrs. Lachlan’s unique qualities—all I want is the child.”

The three Witches held a hurried consultation, nodded agreement, and laced their fingers together in some complicated arrangement that left only Lulah’s right hand free. In the open palm she held the little rowan-and-holly talisman. The two men disentangled their fingers to cup their hands around Lulah’s. They seemed to be pressing inward, keeping something invisible squeezed tight around the wooden token.

Lulah caught her breath in a wounded little gasp, then reached blindly for the doorknob. Neither Alec nor Nicky could help her—their hands were pushing still against the power focused on the talisman. At last she got the door open and flung the thing into the hall, shoving a shoulder against the door to slam it shut.

The lower two feet of it splintered inward, with a blast of fierce white light that brought tears to Lachlan’s dazzled eyes and made Holly moan in pain. Cam cried out and slipped to his knees, the baby howling in his arms. The girl gave a muted whimper, then settled against the pillows again.

“Evan? Evan!”

“I’m okay.” He knuckled his eyes and peered down at Holly. “You?”

“Yeah. It hurt like hell for a second, though.”

Jamey was holding up Nicky—or perhaps it was the other way around. Lulah was slowly sitting up, Alec beside her, picking bits of the door out of her pant legs. Cam staggered to his feet, the child securely in the crook of one elbow.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Lulah said shakily. “That just plain wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I told you there was too much magic!” Cam pointed to the wall. It was . . . rippling. So was the floor beneath their feet. “
Now
can we get out of here?”

“Herr Weiss may have other plans,” Holly warned.

From her seat on the carpet, Lulah squinted through the hole in the lower section of the door. “I don’t think he’s going to be a problem.”

Jamey reached to open the door, snatching his hand back when the knob sagged like soft dough. The wooden doorframe shrank, expanded, warped to the right. The door cracked and popped open with the pressure.

Down the corridor, Weiss lay crumpled and stunned, rising and falling with the undulations of the floor. The wall near him developed a blister that grew bigger and bigger until it nudged him over onto his back. He groaned and turned onto his side and vomited.