A Celtic Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,6

the window and shuddered. "Do you have any idea how cold it is out there?"

He looked down at her flip-flops and shook his head. "Why are you here?"

Nell raised an eyebrow and helped herself to a seat at the table. "I figured you'd know why. How come you're messing with my fetching spell?"

Her what? "I haven't been in Realm in a month." There was no time for gaming with Morgan charging around the world on two legs.

"Not Realm. The fetching spell we use to find new witches. The one that grabbed Elorie last year."

Ah, yes. That fetching spell. "Haven't you turned that thing off?" It was a menace to innocent witches everywhere.

"It was off. And you're going to burn your sandwiches."

Damnation. Marcus grabbed the frying pan and plunked it, not very ceremoniously, on a slab of brick he'd taken to using as a hot plate.

"He burns them a lot." Lizzie grinned from the corner.

"Quiet, rabble-rouser, or I'll feed you the one with onions." He scooped up the greasier of the two sandwiches and plopped it on a plate. "I suppose you'd like some milk with this."

"Uh, huh." Lizzie eyed the plate. "That's a really big sandwich - Nell can have some if she wants."

His puny babysitter was more than capable of eating the whole thing herself. Which meant she was giving him a not-so-subtle lecture on hospitality instead. He rolled his eyes. "I'll share mine - I'm sure Nell will appreciate the more grown-up version."

The witch in question snickered and got up from the table. "Don't be so sure of that. I'll pour the milk." She got down three glasses.

Marcus scowled. He hated milk. Almost as much as Lizzie hated carrots.

Bossy women were going to be the death of him.

Nell poured milk for Lizzie and tried not to laugh. It rated as a totally average lunch on the Walker-family scale, but poor Marcus wasn't quite there yet. High comedy for the Buchanan digs.

It was not, however, getting her question answered.

She carried both halves of Marcus's onion-laden sandwich and two mugs to the table and reached for her bag. One thermos full of really good coffee - she knew better than to come to Fisher's Cove unprepared.

He sat down across from her and sniffed. Wistfully.

She poured coffee into both mugs. "Caffeine is the patron saint of parents. Trust me."

His lips quirked. "It's not exactly in large supply here, and we seem to raise a fair number of children despite the lack."

"Okay. Feel free to do things the hard way." She shrugged and sipped from her mug. Pure heaven. "But Lauren's found the best source of coffee beans in the known world."

He picked up his sandwich, a few stray onions sliding out the sides, and eyed his steaming mug. "Can she be bribed into sending regular deliveries?"

If she couldn't, several other denizens of Witch Central probably could be. Nell reached back into her bag and pulled out a paper sack stuffed full of beans. "Send up a beacon when you run out."

Marcus inhaled the heavenly aroma - and then his lips quirked. "This wouldn't cost me my firstborn by any chance, would it?"

Her girls would be more than happy to steal Morgan for a few months. "Maybe for a visit. If you want a second bag, though, you have to stop messing with my code."

He frowned. "I haven't touched your fetching spell."

Right. Nell set down her coffee and picked up her own sandwich. Might as well eat while she interrogated the suspect. "How do you explain the small tracker it wandered home with?"

His eyebrows flew up. "What on earth makes you think I have that kind of time to waste?"

She blinked. That was offended innocence speaking. He'd seemed like the obvious culprit. "I was doing a routine security check. System flagged a rider on the fetching spell. Just a couple of lines of code. It's tight." The kind of thing good programmers wrote on autopilot and bad ones turned into six pages.

He chased down onions with a large swig of coffee. "And of all the coders in all the world, you walk into my kitchen?"

Marcus was being funny. And he watched Bogart movies. Nell wasn't sure which of those two things meant the end of the world was closer, but both were entirely weird. "I traced it back to a Nova Scotia IP address."

"Ah." He contemplated something on the table that looked like bits of play dough. "Well, good coders are rather more scarce in this part of the world, but I'm