Something About Witches (34 page)

The sphere floated with apparent aimlessness across the room, like a child’s balloon. When he’d pulled himself into the room with a grunt and deep inhale to get the breadth of his chest through, Derek sensed a mild shimmer of energy. It was a gate of sorts, to keep the sphere here. A child gate.

Soft green, blue, lavender and pink colors swirled in the light of that sphere. What emanated from it was peace, a child’s laughter…. quiet.

Looking around the cave, he saw the sphere wasn’t the only thing here. He found the things he would have expected in Ruby’s room above. Crystals and favorite pieces of jewelry were tucked into natural hollows in the rock. Unlit candles were clustered here and there with a variety of compatible scents. Vases of dried flowers and herbs added color. These weren’t random choices, but items placed in key positions. Items with great sentimental value that could be infused with power and intent, a continuous feed for that sphere. Seeing a faded stuffed dog with a wrinkled face, he recognized the second toy he’d ever given her, for her seventh birthday.

Studying the layout, he detected the five points, the bisecting lines. The pentagram was anchored with a blend of complex magics, but what each had in common was a rare, one-of-a-kind ingredient. This was where Ruby had woven the power she’d gained from trading pieces of her soul.

She’d brought together Dark and Light, and created a mother’s womb.

He drew closer to the sphere, his throat aching. The colors swirled, melded, separated, like an animated Impressionist painting. However, the pale pink, the color of innocent, new flesh, stayed the same, though it bobbed around in the sphere,
a tiny astronaut holding her toes to do slow somersaults in what appeared, to her, as limitless space.

He was looking at the soul of their daughter. She still held the last shape she’d had in the womb, such that he could see the fragile skull, the fingers and impossibly small toes. If he’d had any doubt, the spirit shimmered, telling him it was of course not the physical body. However, to help the magic, maintain the focus, Ruby had likely visualized her as she’d been when she’d died. Which meant….

“You saw her,” he realized.

“I held her.”

Derek’s eyes closed as Ruby’s voice, punctuated by a tremor, whispered through the chamber. “As I said, when I was lying in the street, and summoned all that power, I sent the fetus here, held her in a stasis, so the soul wouldn’t leave. When the hospital released me, I came here, worked the magic, finished it.

“I buried her in a pretty place. That place we went to, in the mountains, you and me. I thought she’d like having her remains there. And one day…. I thought I might tell you, so you could visit her. I knew you’d want to, and that you’d like knowing she was there.”

Derek drew in a breath as the fetus rolled. “Her eyes are open.”

“Yes. It’s kind of misleading, seeing her this way, when what we’re really seeing is a soul.”

He nodded, not sure what to say to that. Putting out his hand, he touched the sphere, knowing the magic would allow that. He felt it. Felt her. The soul that was a combination of both his and Ruby’s DNA, of their hearts, minds and spirits.

Her face lifted, those eyes blinking. With his own expanded senses, he knew their daughter detected him. As if, through his touch, he became part of the dream she was in, a pleasant, unquestioned addition, but there was no awareness of this place, of where he actually was.

“What world did you give her?”

“All the best of everything.” Ruby had drawn to his side, but there were six inches between them, six inches charged with almost as much energy as had gone into making that sphere. “She’s in a place where she feels loved, accepted. She laughs and smiles and plays. There are meadows and sunlight, ponies and dress-up. When she wants to sleep, she lies down on soft grass and sleeps while the moon rises above her with a million stars in the sky. It’s Paradise. It’s Heaven, for a baby. For a little girl.”

He nodded. That fetus was so close to his hand, bumping the side of the sphere. There was no impression of contact, only the sense of light over his fingers, but it was still startling, seeing her so close, seeing how, as she turned, her head would have been dwarfed by his hand. She would have had Ruby’s ears, her fingers. Goddess help her, she looked like she got his big feet, but maybe she would have grown into those. Or he could have come up with a spell to shrink them for her.

A tremor went through his hand.

R
UBY HAD KNOWN DEREK STORMWIND SINCE SHE WAS
a little girl, had fallen in love with him from the moment she’d liked boys. He’d been her friend, her mentor, her staunch supporter, and eventually her lover. She was so used to him being a know-it-all, had actually relied on it, hyperaware he was centuries old, always so wise and strong. Though in a sexy, appealing way, not an ancient, bearded-wizard way. She’d teased him about that when she wanted to yank his chain about their age differences.

She thought she knew him pretty well. Even so, she wasn’t at all prepared to see the emotions that crossed his face. Maybe later he’d be angry by what she’d done. Or, worse, repulsed. But right now, she was looking at a father meeting his daughter for the first time, at the same moment
he had to face the bittersweet knowledge that the flesh-and-blood person she would have been was dead and gone.

She’d known him to get pissed off, frustrated, and even grieve in a silent, strongman type of way. She’d never seen Derek Stormwind with tears gathering in his eyes, or fingers shaking as he tried to stroke the wisps of energy that flowed around the sphere like fog. The way he might have stroked the wisps of his baby’s hair.

She’d felt shame for what she’d done, even knowing she was going to keep doing it anyway. But she’d never felt that shame as keenly as she felt it at this moment, so sharp it could cut out her heart, if she hadn’t already diced it up to preserve what was in this room.

She’d thought of him as the enemy, the one from whom she had to keep her secret or he’d take it away. Yet he was a male who’d lived for so long without any family. In those first stunning months of pregnancy without him, she’d alternated between yearning for his presence and euphoric rejoicing, imagining his face a hundred times over when he learned he had become a father. She’d nursed the indisputable belief that she was the
one
, the very special person, the only woman given the gift of offering that to him, though she hadn’t been entirely sure of that until he told her a few minutes ago, in the bedroom above. Before that, the idea of it, the hope of it, had made her believe in his love for her all the more.

Now she couldn’t dispute it.

She’d forgotten so much of that in the intervening months, but, watching his reaction, it came back in full flood. It surged up in her even more strongly when he finally spoke, his husky tone taking her breath.

“What’s her name?”

“I wanted to call her Rose. Because she was perfect, just like a rose.”

He swallowed, his voice thickening. “Ruby and Rose. My girls.”

She was crying now,
too, silent tears coursing down her cheeks as one meager but powerful teardrop made its way down his. Lifting her fingers, she took it away, a treasure so full of power that it was as much magic as what she’d spun in here. When he looked down at her, something shifted inside her. Something painful, like a boulder rolling off a vital organ, letting it function for the first time in a long while, difficult and rusty though she might be at using the squashed thing. She couldn’t deny the Dark part of her was still on maximum-security lockdown, but for this she couldn’t keep the regret and pain out of her voice.

“You weren’t here when I needed you. I couldn’t forgive you that, Derek. That’s what I told myself. I wanted to punish you. I blamed you. But the truth is none of it’s your fault. I just wanted it to be. I wanted it to be someone’s fault, because otherwise I had to face the truth. That it was mine.”

“What?” His brow furrowed. “Ruby, there’s no—”

“Yeah, there is. First thing you ever taught me was that any level of power, even if it’s just the power over self, over the choices you make, is a responsibility you can’t abdicate to anyone else. Or blame anyone for. If I hadn’t been afraid of the power, if I’d embraced learning how to use it from day one, she’d be alive. I should have reached out to Raina and Ramona for help, even if I couldn’t reach you.”

T
HOUGH IT HAD BEEN DIFFICULT TO TURN HIS GAZE
from that orb, her pain was palpable, and that pain echoed in his own chest. Derek faced her fully, laid his hands on her fragile shoulders, shoulders that had borne so much. His thumbs stroked over her collarbone, drawing her gaze up to his face.

“Ruby, I’ve fought the Dark for centuries. And every time I wasn’t clever enough, strong enough, intuitive enough, I blamed myself. It’s an irrational truth that has a very vital purpose. It makes us strive to be stronger, more clever, to defeat our obstacles as often as we can. But the rational truth is this: No matter how strong or clever I am, I will continue to lose people, because sometimes, some days, evil and Darkness win. It’s a balance of its own. Yes, you should have reached out. That was a mistake.”

He touched her chin as her eyes darkened with pain. “It’s a difficult one to face, but it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear you found the courage to see that truth.” Now his voice hardened, and from her expression, he was sure there was
a dangerous flash in his eyes. “However, Asmodeus bears all the blame for taking the life of your child, an innocent who should not have been part of this fight at all. It is his sin, Ruby, not yours.”

Her lips gave a tremulous quirk. “You’re using your teacher voice.”

“Does it help?”

“Some.” Her gaze was wary, but something else was there, too. A tender, vulnerable wisp of trust. Shifting his grip, he ran his knuckles down the side of her face. It was an effort, with everything that was in this room— the past, the present, the hovering specter of the future he knew she didn’t want to face— but he tried to ease things up for both of them, give them a little breathing space.

“With you, I wear a variety of hats. Your skills are some of the best I’ve seen, Ruby, and you have a great deal of raw power. If you need and want a teacher to help you use it, the type of teacher your mother should have been for you, I can be that. But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop being the guy who occasionally wants to strangle you, or who gets hard as a rock when I see you pull a colander out of the bottom cabinet.”

“I remember that night.” Her eyes gleamed with cautious amusement. “You changed your mind. Said you didn’t need the colander. I had to put it back.”

It didn’t surprise him at all she remembered, given what had happened later that night. He’d never eaten Mexican in quite that way. Now he stayed silent, his brow lifted as he waited for that clever mind to put it together. Her mouth bowed into a delectable pursed shape.

“You didn’t need the colander at all.”

“Smart girl. The jeans you were wearing that night needed a workout. I was just helping put the stretch in the denim.”

She stroked her fingertips through the strands of hair over his brow, shifted her weight. “I’ve only ever seen you wear one hat. How old is that thing?”

“It doesn’t like revealing its age. And it’s a figurative statement.”

“Yes, Professor.” She’d pulled on a pair of jeans under his shirt, so now she found the back pockets beneath the long tail and tucked her fingers into them. She considered him another long moment. He held her gaze, watched the thoughts gather, sift. The sphere floated behind her, then toward the opening, bounced gently off the barrier, came back, passed between them. It wasn’t matter that could be grasped, but he could feel a warm touch of that Paradise, hear childish laughter, as it passed by.

Ruby was a young woman who’d lost her baby, who’d dealt with it alone. He was asking the impossible; he knew it. The field of her heart was so scarred. All she’d ever wanted was to be loved, and nothing loved so purely and completely as a baby in the womb loved its mother.

Lord and Lady, help her. Help us both.

“The lullaby?” he asked.

“It was part of the magic. I use it now sometimes to connect to her. It reinforces the sphere at the same time.”

Music was part of the trinity for powerful spellwork. Math and poetry were the other two, but music was probably the most potent, when done right. It required a synchronization of lyrics, harmony, an aesthetic and intuitive balance. Its binding was almost irresistible, such that the end intent would gravitate toward it. She’d held the baby in the sphere with a lullaby. If it wouldn’t have made his heart hurt too much, he would have smiled.

At length, she withdrew her hands, crossed her arms, gathering his shirt into folds against her body. She fastened her gaze to his chest, so many emotions in her eyes it was hard not to reach out and touch her. “I know what you want me to do. I just…. I need to think about it. Can you give me time to think?”

It was so much more than he’d expected after seeing all this, after realizing what he was asking her to give up. Letting
out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, he looked toward the sphere with her; then he found her hand. Tugging it free from that locked position across her body, he squeezed her fingers.