A Hidden Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 2) (33 page)

~ ~ ~

Sean looked around the beach. “We gotta find the
prisoner, matey. No one is allowed to escape the great pirate Darth
Vader and live to tell about it.”

Kevin waved his new light saber in the air.
“We’ll find her, Captain. And we’ll make her walk the plank when we
do. Right after the great swordfight of doom. She doesn’t stand a
chance.”

Sean cast out with mind power, trying to find
their prisoner. His brother elbowed him in the ribs. “That’s
cheating, Sean—no mindseeking.”

“We’re pirates. We’re supposed to cheat.
Besides, Lizzie’s using magic, or we’d be able to find her.” The
girl could make herself invisible anywhere near water, which is
probably why she’d insisted they play on the beach. She might be
small and kind of annoying sometimes, but she wasn’t dumb.

“We could use stealth, Captain.”

Sean sighed. Stealth wasn’t nearly as much fun
as swordfights, but when you were playing with a girl, you couldn’t
fight all the time or they complained it was
boring
. “What
your plan, matey?” He growled for good measure. If he had to be a
boring pirate, at least he could sound good.

Kevin grinned. “Mom sent chocolate cake for
snack.”

That would totally work. Lizzie was a sucker for
cake. “Fetch the supplies, and let’s have ourselves a pirate
lunch.”

“What about the prisoner?” Kevin spoke in a
normal voice, but mindbroadcast just enough that Lizzie would
hear.

“Har,” roared Sean and waved his light saber.
“No chocolate cake for the prisoners. Let them eat sand.” He
thought that was a pretty inventive line for a pirate.

Lizzie’s head popped up from behind some
driftwood. “I’m not eating sand. You hafta share; it’s a rule.”

Sadly, she was right, but Mom had probably sent
enough cake for three. She was pretty smart that way. He waved his
light saber at Lizzie. No point letting her off easy.

She just rolled her eyes at him. “Pirates don’t
use light sabers, silly.”

“They do so. We’re modern pirates.”

Kevin held up two pieces of cake. “Eat. Fight
later.”

Lizzie reached for her cake, then sat down,
clutching her head. “Ow. My head hurts.”

Sean could feel her pain beating against his own
mind. She wasn’t kidding—it felt like someone had poked her with a
light saber. A real one. He looked at Kevin. “Go get Elorie,
quick!”

~ ~ ~

The sudden pain in her head had Moira stumbling
off the path and into one of her flower beds. She lowered to the
ground as quickly as she could, heedless for once of the plants she
crushed.

Fear. Rolling waves of it mixing with the pain.
This was very bad.

She reached for power and struggled to drop into
healing trance. It hurt. Oh, her head hurt. Fighting through the
pain, she tried to scan her own head. Feeble old witch. All she
could see was the roiling red of pain. She tried to move her scan
in closer and got washed away like a pebble hit by a rogue
wave.

Her brain was fighting. And it was dying.

You can’t fix this, old woman.

She could feel her hold on consciousness
slipping. The pain slipped away as well, replaced by a numbness
that was far from comforting. Time seemed to slow and she could
hear the gentle breezes, feel the flower petals under her
fingers.

The flowers. Her flowers. She’d spent a lifetime
filling her garden with the magics of healing. With the very last
of her power, Moira reached out.

Plants of life, plants of giving,

Hold me here, amongst the living.

What I’ve shared, give back to me.

As I will, so mote it be
.

Gentle healing seeped in from the flowers under
her fingertips. The frightening numbness eased, replaced by waves
of pain that told her she was still alive. She lay very still,
nestled in her flowers, and waited, and fought.

She wasn’t ready to die yet. She had grandbabies
to rock; Lauren had seen it in Great Gran’s crystal ball. Please,
let it be so.

~ ~ ~

Elorie didn’t fly down to the beach quite as
quickly as Kevin. The two little beans in her belly required more
care, and the rocks down to the beach could be tricky to navigate.
Kevin was clearly frightened, but she could see Lizzie sitting up
and talking to Sean.

Sometimes the distinction between urgent and
emergency wasn’t terribly clear to a ten-year-old. She made a
mental note—they probably needed to build that distinction into
WitchNet as well.

She kept an eye on Lizzie as she hurried down
the beach. No blood, but she was holding her head, and her slice of
chocolate cake looked untouched. That qualified as serious.

Then Sean looked up, and Elorie’s stomach
knotted. He looked worried. Sean never looked worried.

She ran the last few steps and crouched down
beside Lizzie. “What’s the matter, sweetling?”

Lizzie cuddled into her lap. “My head hurts, and
my eyes can’t see very well. It’s all fuzzy.”

That sounded almost like a migraine. Those
weren’t infrequent in witchlings with a new power emerging. Elorie
let out a deep breath. Migraines they could deal with—they just
needed to take Lizzie to Gran. “Is it getting any worse,
sweetheart?”

Lizzie shook her head. “No. But it’s getting
cold. I don’t like the cold—it wants to take me away.”

Elorie sucked a breath back in. That didn’t
sound at all like an emergence migraine.

Lizzie shrank into her lap. “Don’t let it get
me, Elorie!”

Was something external affecting her? Elorie
looked at Kevin. Sean was the stronger mind witch, but Kevin had
better control. “Can you barrier her? Make it so her mind is
shielded?”

Kevin nodded and took Lizzie’s hand. As soon as
he did, Lizzie lifted her head and beamed. “You made it stop!”

Elorie let out her breath a second time. Okay,
immediate crisis averted. Now they needed expert advice. She took
Lizzie’s hand. “Let’s go find Gran. Maybe she knows a story about
that nasty cold you were feeling.”

Sean danced up the path ahead of them, waving
his light saber and fighting off the great cold menace. Elorie
wished it were that easy. Some of the symptoms of emerging power
were terribly frightening for witchlings. Some were terrifying for
the adults as well.

It didn’t sound like fire magic, and that was a
good thing. But the cold worried her. If memory served, that was
one of the possible signs of astral travel. She held Lizzie’s hand
more tightly.

Suddenly, up ahead, Sean’s light saber went
crashing to the rocks. He turned around, ghost white. “It’s Gran,
Elorie. She’s in awful pain.”

For one terrible moment, no one moved. Then the
earth tilted, and Elorie took off after Sean at a dead run. As she
rounded the corner to Gran’s garden, she saw Uncle Marcus flying
out the door of the inn, face constricted in terror.

Then they heard Sean’s scream.

Gran. Oh, God. Gran.

The sight of Gran, lying pale and twisted in her
flowers, nearly broke Elorie in two. She dropped down next to
Gran’s side, searching frantically for a pulse.

Marcus grabbed her wrist. “She lives. Just
barely, and her head has had some sort of terrible trauma, but she
lives.”

Elorie gulped for air. Gran was their healer;
the village had no other. Clearly there was no time to fetch
medical help—getting emergency services to Fisher’s Cove took far
too long.

Emergency.

WitchNet.

She swung around to the witchlings behind her,
all frozen with fear. “Go find every laptop you can. Run!” They
took off, feet flying.

She turned back to Marcus. “Find Sophie. Use the
alerts.”

He was already typing frantically into his
phone. “I’ll get Jamie and Ginia as well—they can help round up any
other healers. I think Meliya was in Realm.”

“Hurry.” Elorie held Gran’s hand tightly. She
felt so cold.

Sean was back moments later with a laptop.
Marcus grabbed it and pounded furiously on the keys.

Sean looked down at Gran. “Why is she holding
the flowers?”

Elorie’s brain tried to follow his odd question.
“What?”

“She’s holding flowers,” Sean said.

Elorie reached gently for Gran’s other hand,
clutching a crumpled blue flower. Her breath caught. “This hand
isn’t as cold.” Then she recognized the blue. Cornflower.
Healing.

Gran’s garden was keeping her alive.

Elorie could hear Marcus barking commands to
whoever he’d managed to track down. Her head snapped up. “Do you
have Ginia?”

He nodded.

“I need her. I need all the plant blooming and
healing she can push to me.”

Marcus looked at her like she’d gone mad.

Elorie pointed to Gran’s hand clutching the
flower. “I think she’s pulling healing from her plants.” She waved
her arm at the garden. “But look at them—they’re weakening.”

Marcus reached for the nearest plant. “I have a
little earth magic. I’ll help.”

“No!” Elorie’s voice snapped out, shocking even
herself. “We have more powerful earth witches online, and spells
already in the WitchNet library. I need you to find me healers. The
plants are only life support; they can’t bring her back. Find
Sophie.”

She reached for the laptop beside her. In the
meantime, she could keep Gran’s garden alive. Kevin touched her
shoulder, pale, but determined. “We can do that part, Elorie. With
the plants. I can pull the WitchNet spells.”

Sean was already crouched in front of a flower
bed, fingers waving softly. Lizzie sprayed a gentle mist of water
from her fingers and crooned gently to the flowers.

Kevin was right. She would be needed to pull
whatever healing spells they could find. She handed him the
computer just as Ginia’s face popped onscreen.

Marcus practically threw her his laptop. “I have
Sophie.”

Elorie nearly broke again when she saw Sophie’s
face. “It’s bad, Soph. I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s in her
head.”

Sophie was a study in anguish. “I can’t heal
what I can’t see. Dammit, we haven’t coded a healing scan for
WitchNet yet.” Her voice cracked. “That was on my to-do list for
next week.”

Elorie’s eyes closed against the pain. So very
close. They had a healer, and a way to pull the magic, but the
healer couldn’t see. Her head ached from twin waves of fury and
impotence.

Headache.

She grabbed the computer screen. “Sophie. Would
a new healer be feeling Gran’s pain?”

Sophie frowned in confusion. “Yes. Any healer
would.”

Lizzie.

She whirled around. “Lizzie!” The child ran
over, water still dripping from her fingers. “Kevin, can you let
down Lizzie’s shields, just a little?”

He nodded, fingers still flying over the
keys.

Lizzie grabbed her head.

“I’m sorry, sweetling.” Elorie pulled Lizzie
into her lap. “We think you might be feeling the same thing as
Gran. Can you tell Sophie how it feels?”

Lizzie rubbed her eyes. “Like a big pounding
inside my head. It hurts most right here.” She touched over her
left eye.

Sophie met Elorie’s eyes, fear growing. “Is the
pain sharp and pointy, sweetie, or big and round?”

Elorie read the words Sophie had typed into the
message box on her screen.
If this gets any worse, keep her
tightly barriered. We don’t want to lose two
. It was all Elorie
could do not to scream.

Lizzie tilted her head, considering Sophie’s
question. “Mostly big and round, but sometimes it’s pointy. It’s a
little better now, though. I think the plant spells are
helping.”

Sophie’s voice wavered. “I hope so. I hope we
have enough ready.” Then she straightened up. “Lizzie, you can go
back to watering now. That’s a big help.”

Elorie looked back at the screen, afraid to
ask.

Sophie looked grim. “It sounds like a stroke.
We’re going to need to move her. You need to get her into Realm,
little sister. That’s the only place we can gather healers quickly
enough.”

Words caught in Elorie’s throat as she clutched
Gran’s hand tighter. “Is it safe to move her?”

“No,” Sophie shook her head, tears falling. “It
could kill her. But if we don’t move her, she’ll die.”

Jamie’s face suddenly popped up on her screen,
the soaring hills of Ocean’s Reach behind his head. “We can help
with that. Elorie, I’m going to push you a special transport spell.
We’ll use full teleportation—that will be gentlest for her.
Aervyn’s anchoring into rock here to help hold everything as steady
as possible.”

Elorie closed her eyes in desperate appeal for a
miracle. She knew magic could kill. If hers killed Gran…

Uncle Marcus’s hand landed gently on her
shoulder. “We have a full circle waiting. You can do this. She
would trust you with her life.”

Holding onto the trust in his eyes, Elorie
clasped her pendant and called her power.

“
For Gran I seek, for Gran I call,

In power and love, do we stand tall

With magic steady and hearts all true.

Keep her with us, life renew.

There’s love to give, and babes to see,

As I will, so mote it be
.”

If babies couldn’t keep Gran with them, nothing
would.

With a steadiness she hadn’t known she could
still command, Elorie reached for the transport spell as Jamie
pushed. Even she could tell it was a work of art—delicate, complex,
and rock-steady. Gran could be in no better hands.

Just as she readied to activate the spell, a
second spellshape formed on the computer screen in Ginia’s
hand.

It’s the healers,
Uncle Marcus sent.
They’ll help hold her steady as soon as she crosses into
Realm
.

Elorie wrapped the second spell around the
first. Gran’s hand was getting colder again. They had no more time
to waste.

She
pushed
.