Free A Nomadic Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 4) by Debora Geary

to sit here and pretend my brain leaked out of my head.”
    “What’s not to believe?”  Nell was ready to crack Moira’s cauldron over his thick skull.  “Let’s talk about facts.  Fact—Adele got into Realm, and she didn’t do it with code or spell.  Fact—she brought a message and something in it knocked you out cold.  I can only presume it was truth.”
    She paused, reining in her temper.  A little.  “Fact—the message spoke of a baby coming.  She came.  And she arrived coated in the kind of magic you can’t possibly explain away as a paperwork mix-up.”
    His head snapped up.  “We have no idea what kind of magic it was.”
    She did now.  And had scans and graphs and data to prove it.  “The not-of-this-world kind.”
    He was a smart man—and Nell could see the moment when truth finally punched him in the gut.  “Evan.”  One whispered word from a man literally slammed to his knees.
    Any other man she would have gathered in her arms like one of her boys.  This one was far too fragile.  Nell stood vigil as his soul trembled—and sent all the love she dared.
    Finally, he looked up, anguish in his eyes.  “Evan sent the baby?”
    It killed her to do it.  But she owed it to a witch she’d never met.  “Yes.  He sent her to you .”
    And, just maybe, Evan Buchanan had sent the key that would crack the Ice Age in his twin brother’s heart.
    It was a war worth fighting.  Nell looked at the shattered man bowed down in front of her—and signed up.
    She’d give him a couple hours of peace—and then she’d launch her assault.

Chapter 6

    A quick shimmer of magic was all the warning Marcus got.  A small boy materialized in the middle of his kitchen, offering smiles and a plate of cookies.  “Mama sent me.  She says you’re really cranky and you could use some cuddles.”
    Anvils and cuddles.  Nell was a very dangerous witch.  And he was a weak and tired man unable to resist the invitation in big brown eyes.  Or cookies.  “Want some milk to go with those?”
    “Yup.  One for you too—these are dunkers.  You can dunk them in tea if you want, but only really old people do that.”
    A stray chuckle escaped Marcus’s throat.  Aervyn might be the only person alive who didn’t throw him in with the old people.  “Two glasses of milk, then.”
    Aervyn climbed onto a stool next to the counter, helping himself to a cookie.  “Where’s Morgan?”
    It took Marcus a moment to connect the name with the pesky infant sleeping in his living room after countless poopy diapers, another long walk on the beach, and one of the bottles that kept mysteriously showing up on his countertop.  “Taking a nap.” 
    “You should try to remember her name.”  His pint-sized therapist handed over a cookie along with the lecture. 
    It probably didn’t take a psychologist to figure out why he preferred to think of her as “that girl-child.”  Marcus poured two glasses of milk.  “I’m not used to babies.”
    “I am.”  Aervyn nodded sagely.  “Babies are trouble.”
    Marcus blinked.  That wasn’t the direction he’d expected this to head.
    His visitor broke a cookie in two and dropped one half into a glass of milk.  “Mama says they grow up to be more fun, but when they’re little, they just cry a lot and make everybody really grumpy and you have to be quiet all the time.”
    That was quite the list of grievances, especially from a source who rarely complained about anything.  Marcus tried to dig out of his sleep-deprived depression for a moment.  It occurred to him that Fisher’s Cove wasn’t the only place invaded by babies this spring.  “Kenna’s keeping everyone busy, is she?”
    Aervyn grinned in one of the lightning changes of mood cookies often produced.  “She’s trying to crawl now, but she keeps putting her bum-bum in the air and her face on the ground.”  He shook his head at the obvious silliness of such an effort.  “I’m trying to teach her,