A Hidden Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,98

couldn’t keep Gran with them, nothing would.

With a steadiness she hadn’t known she could still command, Elorie reached for the transport spell as Jamie pushed. Even she could tell it was a work of art—delicate, complex, and rock-steady. Gran could be in no better hands.

Just as she readied to activate the spell, a second spellshape formed on the computer screen in Ginia’s hand.

It’s the healers, Uncle Marcus sent. They’ll help hold her steady as soon as she crosses into Realm.

Elorie wrapped the second spell around the first. Gran’s hand was getting colder again. They had no more time to waste.

She pushed.

When she opened her eyes, Gran lay on a low bed onscreen with Sophie at her head. Sophie’s face creased in the focus of healing work, not the grief of death.

They’d done it. Gran was in healer hands.

Marcus took her arm. “Now we wait, and pray.” And he whisked them into Realm.

~ ~ ~

Sophie tried to quiet her mind. Panic was no friend to a healer. She looked up into Mike’s eyes. “You can feel it too?”

He nodded and glanced briefly around the room. “We all do. Stroke, and a bad one. Front left hemisphere.”

“Her channels are badly blocked,” said Meliya, the oldest healer in the room. “I’ve already started working on that.”

Sophie nodded. That wouldn’t address the worst of the damage to Aunt Moira’s brain, but it would prevent any further damage to the rest of her body. Stroke could kill nerves and cause permanent paralysis.

Two of the younger healers sat at Moira’s feet, perfusing her body with oxygen, clearing out the toxins. They had surprisingly little work to do. Aunt Moira’s garden had breathed for her. The crisis was in her brain.

Mike touched her hands. “Ready when you are.”

He was right. They had to get started.

Sophie dropped into healing trance and felt other healers gently joining. Surrounding them all, just outside the room where Aunt Moira lay, was the beating power of a full circle. Sophie drew on their strength, and their steadiness.

Then she began the delicate and tricky journey into her patient’s brain.

There were two kinds of stroke—blockages and burst vessels. She was almost positive they were dealing with the second. Aunt Moira was an experienced healer, and any trained healer did regular self-scans. She wouldn’t have missed a major blockage in her brain. Unfortunately, burst vessels were a lot more complicated to heal.

Partway up the middle cerebral artery, she found what she dreaded—a lake of pooling blood. She felt Mike’s calm breathing beside her and steadied. She would do her best.

With quick instructions, she dispatched her team. Mike and Meliya would slow Aunt Moira’s heart while they went to work on the burst vessel. Her job would be to grow the new artery walls. It was the type of magic at which earth-witch healers excelled.

And a battle she was very likely to lose. One witch could only do so much, and Mike couldn’t be spared from his job.

She felt a hand slide into hers. Ginia. Earth-witch healer-in-training. Once more, Sophie steadied. With sure mental hands, she began to work. Grow a cell, stitch it to its neighbors. Grow another cell, repeat. It wasn’t difficult work—it was a race. They had about two minutes.

When Ginia had the basics down, Sophie left her working at the easier part of the tear and headed for the worst of the damage. She could feel the younger healers siphoning blood away so she could see, but it was still making the work very difficult.

An errant thread of power caught her attention, and she turned around. Then she gaped in shock. Aunt Moira’s torn blood vessel was growing toward her at impossible speed. The kind of speed that took twenty healers, not one trainee. There weren’t twenty earth-witch healers on the planet.

No, said Jamie’s mental voice. But there’s one, and Elorie’s pushed out Ginia’s magic to every spellcoder in Realm. We’re replicating as fast as we can, and Ginia’s coordinating. Can you use it?

Oh, hell, yes. Sophie grabbed the growing blood vessel as it nearly knocked her over and began pushing it sideways. With this kind of growth, they didn’t need to repair the tear. They could go around it.

Thirty seconds later, they had a new vessel ready to join above the tear. Sophie worked feverishly on the join, as did every other spare pair of healer hands.

They backed away with seconds to spare. Sophie signaled Mike and Meliya to speed Aunt Moira’s heart back up.

Then she did what every healer does