A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) Read online

  Lauren slid into Moira’s tub, smiling at her early-morning company.

  Nat handed over a cup of tea. “Aaron says there will be breakfast in an hour.”

  Her stomach was still on California time. “Not hungry, thanks.”

  “Drink the tea.” Moira’s words came with a twinkle, but that didn’t make them any less an order. “It will help you get back to sleep.”

  Lauren sighed. Insomnia was probably pretty obvious when you showed up looking for a soak at this hour of the morning. “When I close my eyes, I keep seeing yesterday.” And the days before that.

  “The tea will help with that as well.” Their elder healer’s tone was even—and still made Lauren squirm. “As the infusion Ginia left for you would have.”

  Damn. “Devin tried to make me drink it.” And she’d acted like a cranky two-year-old.

  Nat only watched and issued a steady, silent invitation.

  Lauren laid her head back on her favorite pillow rock. Maybe there was more than one way to exorcise the dreams. “I keep replaying the scene from the hall at Chrysalis House as Hannah walked out.”

  “A moment of import,” said Moira gently.

  And how. “Yeah. They were so happy for her. All these people who looked like empty shells, standing in the hallway. This one guy was sitting in a chair facing the wall.” Lauren choked back the barbed-wire tangle of his mind. “I should know by now. Lots of Tab’s kids do stuff like that, and I know they feel as much as any of us.”

  Moira’s eyes were unfathomably kind.

  Lauren looked down at the rippling water and let the moment wash over her again. “He felt hope. Only two people have left that wing of Chrysalis House in the last two decades, and when Hannah walked down the hall, every single one of them lit up.”

  Hope. That one day, it might be them taking those steps.

  Nat’s mind was drowning in compassion. For all of them. “How was that for Hannah?”

  “She walked down the hall and stopped by every last one of them. Sometimes just a word or two. Or none at all.” It had been amazing and quintessentially human and unfathomably sad. “If she has to go back, it will hurt more than just her.” Every soul in the hallway would weep.

  Warm fingers met hers in the water’s depths. “Witches aren’t the only ones who love.” Nat, who knew that better than any of them.

  “I know.” But it had kicked her someplace hard. “We have to help her.” And there were far too many people in Witch Central afraid that might not be possible.

  Which needed to stop. Starting with one realtor who needed to tell the truth, get some sleep, and start doing her job. She looked at the two women sitting in the pool with her in the early light of morning and took the first step. “I need to tell you what I saw. The first time I met her.” It was getting in the way.

  “Of course you do.” Moira’s words were soothing balm. “I do believe that’s why the birds stirred us early this morning.”

  Then the birds were way smarter than one stubborn realtor. Lauren breathed out air that felt like water, the words so damnably difficult to say. “I saw Ginia here, in your cottage. I think she lived here.” So many ways that had hurt her soul—and awed it. “She looked so grown up.” Her eyes sought Moira’s, seeking forgiveness for what that meant.

  And found gratitude. “Ah, my lovely—did you think that would make me sad?” Old hands reached across the water, offering comfort. “I know my days here draw to a close.”

  Lauren sniffled and let the inner child who had been kicking rocks for days have her say. “It felt so real, you being gone.”

  “For as long as you remember me, I will still be here,” said Moira softly, each word pure compassion.

  The inner child contemplated a tantrum. “It won’t be the same.”

  “I should hope not.” Eyebrows peaked above amused green eyes. “You’ll just have to come visit more often while I’m still here.”

  Lauren managed a smile, like she was meant to. And wished, fervently, to grow up to be even a tiny bit as cool as the mighty matriarch of Fisher’s Cove.

  Moira settled back beside Nat again, pleased. “Ah, it does my heart every kind of good to think of Ginia all grown up and tending to my gardens.”

  Lauren wasn’t there yet. The loss not-yet-here had sliced her right in half. “It might not happen that way.”

  “Of course not. Precog is tricky stuff.” Moira smiled. “And we don’t want our sweet girl feeling like she has to grow up and tend to an old witch’s flowers.”

  But even the possibility of it was a warm and cozy blanket around their matriarch’s shoulders. Lauren leaned her head back, wishing she could accept so easily. She looked over at her best friend. “I think I need more yoga classes. How do you and Jamie do this?” The small boy with the snowman was deeply real to them—until this day, Lauren hadn’t really understood how much.

  Nat shrugged. “We love what is and what might be.”

  And made it look as easy as blowing a kiss. “I thought I knew how it felt for the two of you.” She’d been attached to Jamie’s brain when he’d first seen the toddler and the snowman. “I wasn’t even close.”

  Nat breathed in and out in mute, absolute sympathy. “You saw a baby too.”

  “It was just a flash.” A tiny infant, only seen for a fraction of a second. Lauren felt her stability shaking again. “I hardly even saw her.”

  “It was enough.” Moira’s hands crossed the pool again. “Your heart knows that. Don’t let that very bright and rational mind of yours say otherwise.”

  Lauren felt the tears coming. “I loved her.” So ridiculously, inescapably much.

  “Aye.” A soft shoulder now, and the tight arms of comfort. “And perhaps you will one day hold her again.”

  The grief that had been shimmering for days slid out into the safe waters of Moira’s pool. “I’m afraid to look again.”

  The arms held her closer. “I know, my sweet. I know. But you will. And if you need to come cry again in my pool, you’ll do that too.”

  -o0o-

  It was sad when a guy had to make his own granola for breakfast. Jamie looked down at the pathetic contents of his bowl. Nat’s came out of the oven all crispy and clumpy and golden brown. His was burnt and looked like the stuff Kenna fed the squirrels.

  Good grief. A whole twenty-four hours without them and he was turning morbid.

  Maybe something to do with the incessant chalkboard in his head. Bringing Hannah to his house had seemed like a reasonable idea—empty, lots of magical precautions in place, and he was one of two people she could look at reasonably safely.

  But the scratching, scraping sound behind his left ear had plagued him all night. Maybe his mother wasn’t entirely crazypants. Hannah’s magic, calling to theirs.

  No freaking thanks. He grabbed his spoon and started dunking granola bits in the yogurt.

  And then heard footsteps on the stairs and felt like an idiot. It was her first morning out of captivity and all he had to offer was squirrel food. Jamie dove for the fridge. Bacon didn’t take long. All witches liked bacon.

  “Good morning.” She stood in the doorway, looking tentative as all hell.

  “Hey.” Shit. No bacon. “Sleep okay?”

  “Yes. No.” She laughed, a sound at odds with the wallflower body language. “I kept seeing shadows on the wall from the tree outside.”

  He decided to go with the laughter. “Monsters under the bed, huh?”

  She relaxed a little further. “Maybe a few.”

  Probably not a surprise. He reached out a gentle mental channel—and heard singing. Some childhood jingle about bluebells and cockle shells.

  A mind trying to cope with her first breakfast in his kitchen.

  Her fingers trailed over the wall to the light switch. “Do you mind if I turn these on?”

  Sun beamed in the windows. He frowned, agreeable, but perplexed. “Sure, go ahead.”

  Her hands shoved together, lights still off. “Sorry
. Every morning, I get up and go to the small dining room. I sing a song for Belinda, because she likes it when people greet her that way. And I make sure the lights are on, because Mason can’t eat without them.” She paused, wildly uncomfortable. “I guess I’m feeling a bit out of sorts this morning.”

  Crap—that explained the song in her head and a whole lot more. Giving up on the fridge, Jamie picked up his iPhone and sent a text to the breakfast rescue squad. Time to do a much better job of making a witch feel welcome. “I’ll feed you in just a bit. Come on, let’s go sit down in the living room.”

  She wandered in behind him, taking in the décor. “I like your house. It’s got this really relaxed feeling.”

  He grinned. “It’s missing the wild toddler.”

  Her eyes circled the room, suddenly sad. “You took down your family pictures.”

  “Yeah. Just a precaution.” He reached for his phone again and tightened his hold on her brain clamp. “Wanna see her?”

  She wanted. And she feared. He waited as her mind wrestled—and finally, full of sorrow, opted for safety. “Maybe not right now.”

  Damn. This wasn’t the morning she deserved. And he was running out of ideas on how to fix it. Usually they’d give her a ten-year-old sidekick and a rapid introduction to the inviting chaos of Witch Central, but that wasn’t possible this time. They’d gotten Hannah out, but until the brain trust reconvened, nobody had much idea what came next.

  She eyed his knitting, tossed sloppily on one end of the couch—he’d been working on a very pathetic scarf at night lately to help his fire witch of a daughter fall asleep. Hannah’s eyes were shuttered, but her mind yearned.

  Huh. He sat down and picked up the misbegotten excuse for a scarf. “You knit?”

  “No.” Now a touch of bleakness edged in. “Belinda does. Back at Chrysalis House.”

  And whatever the rest of them thought about her life there, that small bit of yarn communion had clearly been a highlight of her days.

  Jamie got up. Time to be a guy of action. His one and only weaving project had involved some cardboard and a lot of five-year-old frustration, and bore zero resemblance to the contraption they’d liberated from Chrysalis House along with Hannah. Above his pay grade. “Come on—I want to take you to see someone.”

  Wariness. So much uncertainty. “Is that safe?”

  It had to be better than children’s songs, light switches, and his sad excuse for granola. Time to hook the new witch into the part of their community that went nutso over a ball of yarn. Caro would know what to do with a weaver.

  And it was dumb that they hadn’t hooked her in already—her mind powers beat his hands down. They’d moved fast and missed the obvious. Hannah could sit in Knit a Spell and inhale yarn fumes and maybe find her feet.

  He just had to get her there. Jamie winced mentally and looked over at his new charge. “How do you feel about teleporting?”

  She laughed—and then caught sight of his face and paled. “For real?”

  “Yeah. It will get us there without running into anyone.” Which would cause ten kinds of problems and hold up his search for a more worthy breakfast.

  She finally shrugged—but the song about bluebells and cockle shells had gotten a lot louder. “It can’t be any worse than being crazy.”

  True, that. Bringing up the mental coordinates for Caro’s storage room in his mind, he reached for Hannah’s hand. Waiting wasn’t going to make this any easier. “Close your eyes and think of something warm and fuzzy.”

  She paled several shades more—but she took his hand.

  Good enough.

  -o0o-

  It wasn’t every morning that the power readings in her storeroom spiked through the roof. Caro set down her muffin, darn sure it wasn’t yarn doing magic in her back alcove. A quick mindtouch through the wall and she was clear on the identity of one of her visitors.

  Jamie poked his head through the hanging curtain that served as a door. “Good morning. I brought someone to see you.”

  That much, she’d already figured out. This the new witch?

  Yup. And she likes yarn.

  Than was an acceptable reason to show up at the crack of dawn.

  Jamie flipped on light switches and spoke out loud now, presumably for the benefit of the mysterious woman who had landed with him. “Caro’s the owner of this shop, and an excellent mind witch. Caro, I’m going to reinforce the fancy stuff we’re doing in Hannah’s head to help keep her precog at bay, and then you two can meet.” The message he sent on mental channels was far more succinct. Get your barriers up.

  Caro did as instructed. What am I looking out for?

  Her precog triggers are visual. New faces are the worst. He waved her over their direction. “Why don’t you come back here?” She’s a little overwhelmed at the moment.

  Well, this was more interesting than her usual first customer of the day. Caro picked up a skein of the new yellow handspun behind her counter. Might as well go in armed.

  She slid through the curtain, yarn and barriers at the ready.

  Jamie stood against the back wall, radiating enough power to wake up half of Berkeley. And to his left, a lovely, terrified woman was going to take a tumble into the new shipment of silk if she backed up any farther.

  That wouldn’t do—they’d just finished inventory. Caro held out the yellow yarn. “I’d be Caro. Welcome to Knit a Spell. If this isn’t your favorite color, I have a couple of others tucked behind the counter instead.”

  Breath whooshed out of the other two residents of the storage room. Jamie stepped away from the wall, relaxing off red alert. Clearly the worst hadn’t happened.

  Hannah reached tentatively for the skein of yarn. “It looks like sunshine.”

  That had been the idea. “Do you knit?”

  “No.” A slow shake of a still very nervy head—but Hannah’s fingers were already burrowing in the yarn. “I weave. This would make a gorgeous pillow. So cozy.”

  Caro ditched the beginnings of a plan to use it for colorwork. “I think I’ve got enough to make a small throw, if you like.”

  “My loom isn’t big enough.” Hannah smiled, cuddling the yarn. “And I’m sure I can’t afford a lot of it, but I’ll do whatever I have to for this one.”

  Handspun was never for sale. Caro patted the skein a final time, glad to have found it a good home. “Just appreciate it.” She nodded the direction of the shop. “Come up front and look around.” The yarn would distract Hannah while she had a small chat with her bodyguard.

  She wasn’t wrong about Hannah—the young woman made a beeline for the new wall of silk, relief and the beginnings of delight beaming from her mind. Jamie, however, was in no shape to chat. One witch in channel distress.

  Yeah. He followed her to the counter. Have any sugar?

  Caro reached under the counter for her emergency brownie stash. What on earth are you doing that’s using up so much power? He practically glowed with it.

  More like spluttering. He reached for the brownies and started shoveling them in double-fisted. Lauren calls it a brain clamp. We’re basically cutting off oxygen to the source of her precog. Brute-force magic.

  He’d brought her a witch in lockdown.

  Can you trace what I’m doing? I could use an assist if you can figure it out. Jamie mentally winced. Bringing her here on no breakfast probably wasn’t my best idea ever.

  Caro closed her eyes briefly, following the flows. What he’d done wasn’t difficult—but the amount of magic it was taking to keep the clamp in place was staggering. She’s that powerful?

  Either that powerful, or that out of control, or both. It was their best witch trainer speaking now, brain coming back online as the sugar hit. Either way, we can’t let it loose.

  Just a statement of fact—no one was panicking. When you regularly held enough magic in your fingers to set fire to a city block, you learned to rest easy with things big and barely controlled. Jamie knew how to roll with it, and so did Caro. She’ll
be fine here. I can teach her to knit.

  His relief was palpable.

  And along with it came several other bits he wasn’t aware he was leaking at all. Caro frowned—more was up here than a witch needing some weaving supplies. What’s going on?

  He shrugged, more than a little uncomfortable. She makes my precog itch.

  Jamie Sullivan was the most adaptable witch she knew—and he was practically squirming. Caro added up the pieces and set down her knitting. Competent and quick, she slid her magic in under Jamie’s. Brain clamp, handed off. Go. Quit eating all my brownies and find yourself some breakfast.

  He didn’t move. You sure?

  Of course. Caro hopped down from her stool. There was work to do. It seemed she had a new witch to adopt.

  She smiled as Hannah cuddled a ball of soft and fuzzy blue angora to her cheek. This one probably wasn’t going to protest overmuch.

  -o0o-

  “Looks like you know your way around a yarn shop.”

  Hannah looked up as Caro walked over. “Not really.” Chrysalis House hadn’t run to rooms of cuddly yarn. “It must be so wonderful to spend your days here.”

  “You’ll get a chance to see for yourself.” The shop owner started rearranging a rainbow cascade of small, wooly balls. “Things are quieter in the summer, but the regular knitting group will start showing up in an hour or so. You can get yourself a lesson if you’d like. Most weavers take to knitting pretty quickly.”

  It sounded like a dream. Until the part where other human beings got involved.

  “I can’t—” Hannah felt the panic setting in and tried to tamp it down. “I can’t be here while other people are here.”

  “Nonsense. It’s a life you seek, and that can hardly happen if you’re in solitary confinement.”

  Hannah stared. Someone who had met her two minutes ago had just named the knot in her soul.

  Jamie chuckled, mouth full of brownie. “Caro’s good at figuring people out.”

  “I most certainly am.” The older woman winked at him. “Comes from trying to teach a bunch of rowdy boys how to knit.”

  There had to be a story there. Hannah had loved those things once—the funny, quirky, irrelevant bits of people’s lives. Collected them, almost.