Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (8 page)

After all that portal jumping, I had been positively famished, and I persuaded Mordon to try the Snakebite BBQ Pit with me. Having a new food for the first time was always a hit and miss adventure. Of late my chances had been striking the 'miss' rather than 'hit', so I was taking a real chance on the snakes. But it was so worth having a hit that I went back twice before I felt full enough to start my tale. I'd have only gone back once if it wasn't for Mordon, who also had taken a liking to the food. Lilly was revolted. But her sugar addiction had me nauseous every morning as I watched her dump half the sugar bowl into her coffee, so I didn't mind her disgusted expression.

Barnes took Anna and laid her on her back in the grass before him. It wasn't affection which had made him take the child, it was professional curiosity. He thought over what I said while Lilly quizzed us with questions so thoroughly I doubted that the FBI could do a better job of covering every possibility. That she'd have to listen to a newborn's wail at all hours of the day hadn't occurred to her yet. She was in work mode. That meant cross-examination. For his part, Leif remained quiet, listening to my answers, jotting down notes, occasionally making a comment on Barnes' examination.

They asked the same dumb things over and over again.

“So you were cleaning up when a lady comes in looking for help?”

“She didn't come in, I turned around and she was just there. It isn't the same thing at all.”

“She was an intruder?”

I shrugged, not clear on this point myself. “Could have been. Or maybe she entered before Mordon locked up and she hid from him until he'd gone? Hard to know.”

“It would be easier to know if you hadn't set the wards off. Spell traces will be hard to follow now,” Lilly said.

I sucked in a breath at that and tried to remind myself that Lilly did this for a living. Being accusatory was part of her job. “That is beside the point. And not our doing to begin with. The wards went off because of the grotesque, when it entered, following her.”

Nothing bothered me more than repeating what I'd already said, and I could see that they were going to question the time line. “I was answering you about the wards. First came her, then came baby, then came fire, then came Mordon, and after that came the grotesque and the wards.”

“Did you warn the intruder prior to setting the wards on him?”

That did it.

I officially wanted to scream. “They're created to respond to a stimulus. We didn't ''set'' the wards on anyone. Look, are you going to help or am I going to have to start running away from here like a headless chicken?”

“There was a woman dead on your floor. Why didn't you go to the constabulary?”

I bit my tongue and took a great deal of time to count to ten. Even so my voice had a dangerous edge to it. “Did you miss the part where a thing that even Mordon didn't want to face intruded into the shop and probably laid waste to it while we were gone? This is Mordon we're talking about here, Mr. They're Just Young Dragons Out for Rabble-Rousing It's No Big Deal Mordon.”

Having put it like that, Mordon smiled sheepishly and shrugged. Lilly's eyes opened a little wider, and Leif gave me a look which said that I'd need to tell him that story, pronto. Ah, well. Life was life. But Lilly did not look convinced, and my throat was starting to tighten on itself.

“And once we shook it off our tail, we came here and talked with you. Barnes is a constable. I think this is reporting it as quickly as possible.”

Lilly shook her head. I didn't even listen to everything she said from that point on. From the way Lilly was talking, it sounded like I'd done every single thing wrong and that the child would be better off in someone else's care—anyone else's. She made it seem like it had all been one big colossal mistake and that it was a shame the grotesque had torn up Mordon's shop, but that I shouldn't have done virtually everything that I did do.

By the time Lilly was done making me see a hundred things I could have done better—and differently—I felt ready to burst into tears. This sensation was very odd for me. I didn't know how to cope with it. When Lilly said, yet again, “I can't believe you discarded the ashes, do you know what we could have done with them,” I decided to hang it all, and let myself bawl my eyes out.

The effect was astounding.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared, horror-struck. Not a one of them knew what to do, not even Mordon, all of them petrified right where they sat. This struck me as funny, and I giggled, falling into a full-blown laugh unlike anything I'd done in a long, long time.

Needless to say, that worried them even more.

Anna opened and closed a hand above her body and seemed to enjoy the sound. As she was the only one responding to me, I cleared my throat, leaned against Mordon, and fell asleep very abruptly on his shoulder.

I woke up about twenty minutes later, feeling a great deal better for what could only have been an emotional breakdown. Within a minute of waking, Anna was in my hands. I didn't remember grabbing her, but I must have.

That's when I realized that my breakdown hadn't been for myself.

It had been because I thought they'd take Anna away from me.

How could I care so much, so fast? She'd filled my life with worry and fear, yet her unequaled trust in me had also shown other things. Her very presence had woken me up to the brighter, kinder side of life which I'd seldom seen before in such intensity.

Everyone was watching, not knowing what to say, or if they should acknowledge that I'd gone full-blown meltdown on them mere minutes ago. I asked again, “Do I have you guys with me on this, or is it down to me and a partner again?”

Leif frowned, realizing that I meant it—that if they wouldn't back me up, I would leave the coven and Mordon would likely do so, as well. Barnes' wrinkles at once were deep furrows, set in stone from age and disappointment, and Lilly went so white even her freckles seemed to pale.

“No,” Leif said. “We're all in this together. If you left, we'd have fairly boring lives.”

Pink tinged Lilly's cheeks and her eyes brightened. “This means you need to have a baby shower!”

And for some reason that reminded me: I still needed to find a way to tell my parents.

Outside, the storm had returned. Not the peaceful patter of rain, but the howl of wind whistling through cracks in the windowsill, a sound which had always put me on edge. We got the baby to sleep, all rocking and lullabies and leaving-alone-for-a-while efforts having failed miserably until Leif, Lilly, and Barnes were all too glad to exit my house. Even Mordon's knack with kids had done nothing to stop her fussing. Only securely wrapped to my chest would she quiet and sleep, and now Mordon crashed on my bed while I stared at a fresh sheet of blank paper, a small heap of crumpled attempts to write to my parents lying on the floor by my feet.

The rest of the festival had been far less exciting than the events earlier in the day, but we had been restricted to the kiddie activities seeing as we had a kid in arms. I'd sat there and watched the noise and commotion of children at the peak of their enthusiasm. I was mortified to know that up until now, my life had been practically as serene and peaceful as a convent. I was so not ready for this. 'Don't hit, Johnny, that's not nice.' 'Sally, you need to share with your sister.' 'Timmy-Tom-Thumb, come off of that log right now, before I get angry.' 'Ah! No! Don't eat that, it'll explode in your mouth! Why do they sell these illusion pebbles to kids, anyway, all they do is eat them.' And so on.

Seeing my lack of everything baby, one of the other women had made a dash to get this stretchy strip of fabric which they showed me how to wrap around my body to carry Anna in. The freedom of my arms was fantastic, but the heat from the wrap not so much. And it brought curious strangers very close, because as Mordon said, they all did want to see her.

All the congratulations had been embarrassing. I didn't know what to say when a woman had told me that Anna definitely had Mordon's eyes. For the most part, it was just way too much effort to explain that I was a guardian. At times, I'd say, “She's my ward,” but only to those who had known that I hadn't been expecting a baby in days prior. I didn't think that anyone who knew my parents had seen me, but now I worried that word would somehow get back to them. That would be an awkward thing.

The candle flickered, enchanted to be bright enough that I could see well enough to illuminate the paper. How did I even start this? “Hi”? “Hello”? “Greetings”? “So, hey, guys, I temporarily (I hope) adopted a newborn, just thought you'd know you're grand-guardians or whatever this makes as”? The last seemed like an efficient way to tell them, but alarming and confusing. My eyes stung, and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I was afraid of putting Anna down and waking her up.

I blinked my eyes open and just wrote the stupid thing.

Mother, Father,

I know I haven't talked to you since the woods. I know you blame Mordon for taking me away, but that's not how it is, and that isn't why I'm writing today.

I don't know how far into detail I can or should go, but I made a promise to a woman in duress that I'd keep her and her infant safe. She was pursued by a grotesque, which we've shaken, and which had done some horrific damage to King's Ransom.

I winced at the description of the damages that Barnes had given Mordon. Neither Mordon nor I would go back into the shop until we could know that we weren't going to be followed upon leaving it again. The cases had been smashed, everything inside them cast around, presumably nothing was stolen but who knew. Books had been stripped off shelves. Everything that could be torn or dug into had been. Barnes said he was calling in favors from other constables, who were going to do their work. And that was the last I'd heard.

I burrowed back into the letter.

But the thing is, the woman's dead. A curse, maybe, or maybe she was a fire elemental? Impossible to know at this point. Am undergoing the legal side of guardianship now, might take a while. Which means I have a newborn in my care, and though Mordon has the practice with infants, she seems to cling to me. I thought that she was too young to have a preference yet? I'm utterly lost and I have nothing at all for her. Lilly's talking about throwing a shower, but where do I even start? I'm so worried I can't take care of her. The coven's with me, of course, handling this and that, so that helps.

Well, anyway, thought you'd like to know the truth of the matter, in case anyone mentioned that I've got a kid with me now.

—Fera

As far as letters went, it wasn't all nice and touchy-feely, or even very explanatory, but it would have to do. I folded it, stuck it in an envelope, and planned on surrendering it to Mordon tomorrow to send. Saying that I had nothing was a little bit of a stretch. Leif had appeared a few hours ago with a cradle and everything that was to go inside it, so I laid Anna down in it now, carefully lest the movement wake her. All the fussing must have been exhausting, because she was sleeping pretty solid now. I plopped down on the bed beside Mordon, pushing at his arms and legs to make room for myself on the mattress. I fell to sleep to the whoosh of water pouring off the roof.

All too soon, Anna's soft cry woke me. My eyes felt glued shut and my mouth like it had been stuffed with cotton balls, but I pulled one arm up then the other. By the time I sat upright, Mordon was already on my side of the bed, his red hair all fanned out and his clothes rumpled. He had Anna and was already seeing to her needs.

“Go back to sleep,” he told me.

I didn't, though I wanted to. The biggest disadvantage of mail in the magical world is that it finds you no matter where you are, and you can't pretend to have not checked the box or mail slot. And someone chose nice and early at seven in the morning to burn me a letter which landed in my lap.

Bleary-eyed, I watched as the words revealed the addressee. It made me grumble but I wasn't awake enough to feel more than that. It said:

THAUMATURGICAL TRIBUNE LEGAL DEPARTMENT

Blankly, I read the sender's name and wondered what could possibly be within the envelope. They'd obviously received my false account letter. So they could respond to it in, what, three ways? To say that 'oh hey we got this thing from you, just letting you know we got it;' to say, 'we got this thing from you and it was all an honest mistake;' or to say, 'we got this thing from you and we're going to make your life miserable.'