A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) Page 4

  “Does it matter?” Devin frowned, forked waffle stalled in mid-air.

  “Yes.” Retha could still taste the panic of her first precog experience. “If she can’t control her episodes, we’ll have to try to do it for her.” And the only way to do that was messy, deeply difficult, and fraught with ethical complications. “The less often we have to do that, the better.”

  “You did it for me once.” Jamie’s voice was almost somber. “Stood inside my head and fought the magic back.”

  He remembered. Retha looked down the table, eyes only for her son. “You were so little, sweetheart.” And the vision he’d seen had scared her silly until the following Halloween. Little boy visions hadn’t been able to separate fake monsters from real ones.

  “You were deep inside my head.” Her son pulled them both back from the past. “Really deep. I remember.”

  Yes. To a small child, it had been the ultimate comfort. To a stranger and a grown woman … Retha turned to Lauren. There were only a handful of mind witches in the world strong enough to pull off what they might have to do. “It’s the magical version of a Vulcan mind meld. I have no idea if it will work on an adult.” Or on a witch who appeared to be far more plagued by precog than anyone at the table.

  Lauren looked grim. “We can’t exactly walk into Chrysalis House and take over her mind.”

  “Even if it could get her out of there?” Retha asked the hard question, knowing everyone at the table needed to hear it. “She’s a witch. We can’t help her if we can’t be with her.”

  Devin didn’t move, but she could feel his energy coiling. “How dangerous would this melding thing be?”

  Concerns for his wife. Sometimes mothers didn’t have the answers. “I don’t know, love. That will depend on how hurt Hannah’s mind is, and how much she’s willing to trust us.” And whether they could pull it off at all.

  “She might not need to trust us,” said Lauren slowly. “At least to start. The psychiatrist who works with her—Dr. Max—cares about her deeply. Perhaps she trusts him.”

  Retha frowned. “But he’s not going to trust us.” There was too much they couldn’t tell him.

  Lauren shrugged, not ready to discard her idea. “He’s not your average psychiatrist.”

  “Unless he’s your average witch, none of this is going to seem credible to him.” Hell, most witches thought precog was a myth. “This isn’t the ability to light a candle or bloom a flower. We’re talking about mind control here.” Some people were open-minded enough to accept small magics. Large ones took a special heart.

  Lauren stared at her bacon for a long, still moment, and then looked over at Tabitha. “I think we need to try.”

  The older woman nodded slowly. “He’ll listen with an open mind. If anyone outside our community could process this, it would be Max.”

  Their resident realtor’s convictions were firming. “It’s our only chance to do this gently. We have to try.”

  No matter what, it wasn’t going to be gentle. But if it worked, it would at least be less violent. Retha nodded and honored the wishes of the witch most likely to be on the front lines. She smiled at her daughter-in-law, once again marveling at the sterling people who had chosen to partner her children. “Devin says you can sell snow to the North Pole. Here’s your chance to try.”

  It didn’t surprise her in the least that Lauren was already mentally marshaling her tactics.

  Not all warriors used swords.

  -o0o-

  It wouldn’t go away, this desperate need to ask. Hannah looked at the calendar on the wall, the out-of-place whimsy filled with children’s drawings and happy faces for holidays.

  August 16th. One week until her birthday.

  Something perilously close to a wish tried to lodge in her chest.

  She looked over at Dr. Max, who was sitting in a chair, waiting. He’d stay that way for hours if necessary—no one had more patience.

  She’d asked him to sit with her here in this monstrosity of an office. Surely she could manage one small question. Hannah took a deep breath, stared at the carefree drawing of a red dragon flying in a rainbow sky, and squeaked out the words that had lodged in her throat all day. “Has anyone come to ask about me?”

  Dr. Max got the strangest look on his face. “Why do you ask that?”

  The dragon blurred, crayon colors merging with the fog in her head. “Please. Was it two women?”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t sitting casually now. “How do you know that?”

  The way she always knew things. “I had a dream.” While sitting up in a chair wide awake, but she’d learned to steer around that part.

  Even in a mental institution, there were degrees of crazy.

  “A dream, or an attack?”

  His words were gentle, just like always. And they sliced at the part of her that ached to be capable only of simple dreams. Frustration lit, ignited by the persistent, awful speck of hope flitting in the dusty air. “Does it matter? I know. One has brown hair and pretty, competent eyes. The other looks like somebody’s grandmother. And her heart shines.”

  Dr. Max smiled at the last. “Yeah. It does. Her name is Tabitha Schwartz.” He paused, watching the dust dance in a stray sunbeam. “She says she would like to try to help you—but I think, somehow, that you already know that.”

  They’d never gone here. Never talked about her dreams, or the visions in her more full-blown attacks, sometimes being true. Hannah wanted to curl up in a small ball. She gripped the edges of her chair instead and tried to hold on to what really mattered. “You know her.” His voice had held affection. That hadn’t been in the dream.

  “I do.”

  His eyes told her nothing. “Can she help me?”

  “I don’t know.” His gaze never left hers. “But I know that she’s kind and very capable. She works with children with autism.”

  Of all the diagnoses people had tried to pin on her, that had never been on the list. “She thinks I’m autistic?”

  “No.” His laugh carried hints of confusion—and that damnable hope. “But she thinks you might be someone she can help.”

  He was asking for permission. It was one of those small things Dr. Max always did—a quiet, insistent quirk that brought respect and honor and light into a place where it would be far too easy to let humanity slide. And even the patients who lived deep far gone in a world of their own loved him for it.

  It was probably a good thing that he was always late and liked country music, or people would suspect him of being an angel.

  And she was woolgathering again. It was happening more often lately. She needed more time with the discipline of her loom and less time staring out windows. “I don’t know how she can help me.” Legions had tried—and most of them started with eyes full of eagerness or hubris.

  They never left that way.

  “I don’t know either.” Dr. Max shifted, his jeans making the comfortable swishing noise she associated with life on the outside. “But I’ve seen her work. I don’t know what she does, exactly—it’s a bit of a mystery.”

  There was a story in the air—she could feel it. Hannah squinted, trying to read his face in the odd shadows and light. “What have you seen?”

  “I was an intern at her center, fresh out of my first year of med school. Lots of hard work, lots of kids who needed play therapy and occupational therapy and speech.”

  Sounded like a fairly typical regimen.

  He smiled. “She let me play with a few of the kids. Said I did a good job of being in touch with my inner child.”

  Her giggle sounded loud in the dirge of an office. “That’s a nice way of calling you immature, I think.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned, chasing away the shadows. “I’ve never claimed to be an adult.”

  He did that every day he walked in the doors of Chrysalis House, but she wasn’t going to argue with him. “So what happened?” It delighted her, this knowing he had a story to tell. Curiosity wasn’t something she allowed herself to f
eel all that often.

  “There was a boy.” Dr. Max’s words got the far-off sound of someone picturing the words they spoke. “About four years old. He was pretty new, and he’d come in a couple of times a week and sit in a corner with his eyes closed.”

  She knew what that meant. Hiding from the world. Eyes that didn’t want to see.

  “Tabitha had one of us sit with him, every time. And she always took a turn. Just sitting. Sometimes she would hum a little.”

  “She’s patient, then.”

  “Like a thousand-year-old tree.” Max paused, finding the trail of his story again. “We’d been doing this for about a month, and dumb summer interns were figuring this kid was a lost cause.”

  Hannah wasn’t convinced he’d ever been dumb. Or that ready to give up on a small boy. “What happened?”

  “He came in one Tuesday morning. Sat in his corner, eyes closed. I was sitting with him, humming some Bob Marley.” The words were husky now, laced with emotion. “He started humming with me.”

  The moment every crazy person lived for—the start of not being crazy. Hannah hugged her knees, waiting. Delighting for the small boy who had found his moment.

  “I was this scared, dumb summer intern, humming reggae in the corner with a kid who was supposed to be hopeless, and I had no idea what to do. Tabitha was there in less than a minute. Came over and sat with us and started quietly singing.” He paused, a grin flitting across his features. “I remember being astonished that she had ever heard of Bob Marley.”

  She could hear his respect—and his awe.

  “We sat there for almost an hour like that.” Dr. Max’s breath let out in a whoosh. “And then the boy opened his eyes and looked at her. And he laughed.”

  Hope, unlocked. Hannah could see it in his eyes. “You reached him.”

  “She did.” There was no jealousy in his words. “She told me I found the key, but I can promise you, I had no idea how to turn it. She took it and turned it into the beginning of the rest of that kid’s life. Taught him and his mom the words to the song.” Dr. Max grinned. “The poor guy talked with a Jamaican accent for months after that.”

  Months? Hannah eyed him. “I thought you were just a summer intern.”

  Something suspiciously red crept up his cheeks. “Yeah. Mostly. I went back when I could. He started high school last week, and he has this cute girl with braces for a lab partner. I think she likes him.”

  It was a story of beauty and humility and treacherous hope, and one that told her as much about the gentle man sitting in the nearby chair as it did about a woman named Tabitha.

  And somewhere in the words, Hannah had found her answer. She stood up, watching the dust motes scatter out of her way, and gave Dr. Max one long, last look. “Tell her I don’t know any Bob Marley.”

  He smiled. “I’ll let her know.”

  Permission granted. Hannah let herself out of his office—and tried not to think any more about the lady from her dreams who knew how to turn lost keys.

  -o0o-

  Lauren smiled at Devin. The log on the fire was totally unnecessary, but he knew she liked it. Ambience, and the metaphoric and literal comfort of home fires burning.

  He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He was handling Kenna duty while Nat taught a class.

  A good way to skip out on the precog briefing that was about to happen.

  Lauren would have given a week’s supply of her best coffee beans to be going with him. To duck, however briefly, into a moment of normal.

  There’s always time for normal, said Retha’s mental voice. Although hanging out with that granddaughter of mine might not qualify.

  The offer implicit in the words was both insightful and kind. Lauren shook her head. No. We need to do this before tomorrow. She wasn’t walking into Chrysalis House unprepared a second time.

  Jamie cracked an eyelid and looked at his brother. “Go away. If we don’t get rolling on this soon, I’m adopting your couch for the night.”

  Devin tossed a well-aimed pillow at the lazing form on the couch. “Don’t drink all my beer.”

  Sibling antics—one of the Sullivan family’s best things. Lauren was pretty sure the next hour wasn’t going to threaten the beer supply any. She smiled as her husband hopped over the couch and Jamie’s prone body on his way out the door.

  The comforts of home came in so many ways.

  Jamie opened one eye as the front door shut. “So why are we doing this, again?”

  Lauren opened her laptop. “Because I need to ask you a bunch of nitpicky questions, and you’ll be less grumpy if you get to lie down while we do it.”

  “Nitpicky, huh?” His mind wasn’t nearly as grumpy as his face. “Not sure I can be much help. Precog sucks—end of story.”

  Realtors were immune to grumpiness. “When I walk a client into a house, I want to know everything. The kind of shingles on the roof, when the walls were last painted, the dimensions of the front hall closet.”

  Jamie’s eyelid slid up again. “You help people find comfortable homes. What’s that got to do with a freaking closet?”

  Spoken like a man who didn’t own a shoe collection. “You write interminable lines of gibberish on your computer screen.” Poking his buttons was fun, even if she had to work hard not to grin as she did it. “What’s that got to do with a swordfight on the drawbridge in Realm?”

  Retha chuckled. “Someday my sons are going to wise up and stop picking dumb fights with the smart women who have joined this family.”

  “Nah.” Jamie tucked a pillow under his head and opened both eyes. “We have to keep you all amused somehow.”

  Amusement wasn’t ever in short supply around the Sullivans.

  “So, details matter.” Her brother-in-law’s mind was awake now, whatever his body language said. “You want me and Mom to babble about precog, or do you have some specific questions?”

  Both. And she usually let her clients do the talking first. “Give me the fast rundown.”

  He shrugged. “Precog’s unpredictable, in both the triggers and the content. It’s not always right, and the visions usually hit pretty hard. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.”

  “That’s true for us.” Retha paused a moment, picking her words carefully. “But we’re only two people. Hannah’s magic might be quite different.”

  Which could render all her careful data collection obsolete. Lauren tapped on the keys of her laptop. It was a good point, and one she needed to remember in the morning.

  She typed quick notes on his rundown, and then zeroed in on the one that bugged her most. “Why do you think it’s wrong sometimes?”

  “That’s one of the little details you wanted to clear up?” asked Retha dryly.

  Lauren shrugged—some details were bigger than others.

  “It’s not like regular magic.” Jamie frowned at the crystal ball that had passed to Lauren from Moira’s family, sitting unobtrusively in the corner. “It’s kind of like that thing, actually. You don’t know when it will decide to talk to you, right? Or what it will decide to talk about?”

  True—and it made her crazy. She was very glad mind magic wasn’t so hinky.

  “I don’t know that precog is wrong,” he said slowly. “I think it shows us something that might happen, and we make the mistake of thinking that the future is singular. Maybe it’s just some universal gamer dude running scenarios, and sometimes he shows us ones that aren’t very likely.”

  That made a frightening amount of sense. If you believed in universal gamer dudes. Or temperamental crystal balls.

  Jamie shrugged. “Or maybe they’re all just full of shit.”

  He didn’t believe that. She knew how deeply he and Nat loved a small boy who didn’t yet exist. “That’s how you cope. You push away what it might mean.”

  “Sure.” He scrunched a pillow in his hands. “Some days. If I can’t do that, then we’re just peons in level four of some big virtual reality game.” He tossed th
e pillow at her head. “I don’t like being a peon.”

  “We have the luxury of believing it doesn’t own us.” Retha’s mind was drenched in sorrow. “Hannah’s not so lucky.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie was deeply sober now, incipient pillow fight forgotten.

  Lauren closed her eyes—and headed to the core of what they danced around. “When you saw Nat the first time, it triggered your magic, which sounds similar to what might be happening for Hannah.” Except for one important detail. “But it happens for her with everyone she meets.”

  Jamie looked grim. “I don’t know whether that means she’s more sensitive, or her universal gamer dude’s leveled up a bunch, but either way, it’s not good.”

  It wasn’t the words that caught Lauren. It was the molten emotion behind them.

  He wasn’t lazing at all now. Just meeting her gaze, a very grown-up witch who wanted her to know exactly how he felt. “Precog sucks, even when you just have a little. We laugh and make light of it, but it’s not like my other magic. I can’t train it or control it, and it lies often enough that I can’t use it in ways that help anyone.”

  Retha nodded slowly. “It tries to take away who we are.” The words were quiet. The stark feelings behind them, far less so.

  Jamie blinked, looking at his mother.

  And Lauren, reading the sudden currents in the room, realized enormous truth had just landed in the middle of her attempt to herd the details.

  They had a witch to rescue. With a magic that two confident, talented, very skilled witches… hated.

  Chapter 5

  There was welcome this time—and also oddness.

  Lauren stepped through the door Max held open and checked her mental link with Tabitha. Something’s up.

  He’s working this through. Tab sounded entirely serene. He’s always been a very bright, very observant man.

  That didn’t make sense. We haven’t said anything yet. Or done anything.

  No. But we believe we can. This will be kicking up a lot of things for him—he’s been her primary doctor since the day she arrived here.

  They’d learned a lot since their last visit. Hannah had lived at Chrysalis House for twelve years. Her parents and brother still visited her often. And Dr. Max had resisted all efforts to move her to other facilities.