“Let me get those omelets started,” she said quickly. “You can put out the dishes.”
She turned toward the refrigerator to fetch the necessary supplies. Behind her, she could hear him open one of the cupboards to get the plates, and then a small clink as he retrieved some flatware from a drawer.
Then, as she was cracking eggs into a bowl, she felt him come up behind her and lean down to press a gentle kiss at the top of her head.
“Thank you for making breakfast,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” she replied, and smiled.
It was late that afternoon when he felt the probes return. He’d been heading into the kitchen to check on Roslyn, who’d somewhat ambitiously declared that she was going to make rolls for dinner, when pressure descended on the house.
At once, his head began to ache, and he reached out to the doorjamb to steady himself. Roslyn looked up from the dough she was kneading, her lovely face already flooding with alarm.
“Malachi? What is it?”
“I fear our friends have come back,” he replied. A breath helped to steady him, and he continued into the kitchen and pulled out one of the chairs at the table so he could sit down.
“The Gibsons?” she asked.
He paused for a moment to study the quality of the oppressive force bearing down on the house. It felt coordinated, multiple witches and warlocks pressing from all sides.
And it also had a flavor he couldn’t ignore.
“No, this feels like the Van Horns,” he said, and at once, Roslyn’s mouth tightened. “I don’t believe the Gibsons have the resources to coordinate this sort of assault.”
She lifted her floury hands from the mass of dough on the countertop and wiped them on a waiting towel. “And the Gibsons just let the Van Horns waltz in here? That seems pretty laidback for a clan that sent three witches to pounce on me just for doing a little shopping.”
A grim smile pulled on the corners of his mouth at that mental image. “I doubt it was quite as simple as that. I have a feeling that Victoria Van Horn — or whoever is leading this particular expedition — framed it more as taking care of the Gibsons’ problem for them. After all, if I’m dealt with, then they no longer have to worry about a strange warlock camping in the middle of their territory. And all clans would much prefer that such situations be taken care of internally, so to speak.”
Roslyn’s full mouth was still compressed, but the way she didn’t make an immediate reply told him she understood well enough.
“So what are we supposed to do?” she asked.
“What we have been doing,” he replied, the only real answer he could give. “This was more than a probe, but they aren’t actively attacking. I will do what I can to shore up the wards, and then we’ll see.”
At once, alarm tightened Roslyn’s lovely features. “That’s the last thing you should be doing, Malachi. You’ve already spent so much building them back up.”
A response he’d been expecting. “And yet it’s the only thing I can do.” He paused, then added, “Those rolls look like they’re going to be delicious.”
That comment earned him a lopsided smile. “Malachi, they’re just a blob of dough right now.’
“True…but I can see what they will become.”
Into the evening and as night fell, the Van Horns continued to push on the wards, poking here, prodding there. Malachi strengthened the places that felt weak, pouring more magic into the wards than he knew he should…even as he realized he had no choice.
But he and Roslyn had been able to sit down for dinner, just cream of tomato soup and sauteed zucchini and the rolls she’d made — which had turned out to be excellent — and he was glad of that. The good but simple food helped to restore some of his energy reserves, and although it couldn’t replenish the magic he was expending to make sure the perimeter wards held, it was still something.
Just as it was something to sit there with Roslyn, to see the lamplight glow in her hair and give that interesting greenish cast to her turquoise eyes. The sight of her strengthened him, even as he knew how little he could actually do once the Van Horns gave up their probing and decided to mount a direct assault.
“Thank you for dinner,” he said, just as he’d thanked her for breakfast nearly eight hours earlier.
“You’re welcome,” she replied.
12
Roslyn was just finishing the dinner dishes when the wards started screaming. That wasn’t the right word for it — wards didn’t have voices, didn’t have lungs or throats or anything else you needed to create sound — but her healer’s senses translated the sensation into something her mind could process. That was why it felt like a high, thin shriek of magical distress, like metal being torn apart under enormous pressure. The sound wasn’t in the air, though. It was in her bones, vibrating through her magic with an urgency that made her drop the dish she was rinsing on the floor. Luckily, it landed on the rug and not the hardwood, but still. She bent down to pick it up with shaking fingers and realized that Malachi was already moving, heading into the hallway from the chair where he’d been resting in the study.
In situations like this, she always went into triage mode. Assess, prioritize, act. It was the same series of steps she used when a patient coded, except in this case, the patient was the house itself, and the code was coming from every direction at once.
