To Love A Witch

Chapter 13

  

Jake held the bike tight, flew like a madman, and prayed this wouldn’t end badly. He thought of himself as a good guy to have around in an emergency, but he wasn’t at all certain this was his crisis to solve.
If Jolie was right, that was going to be the job of the woman clinging to his back.
He slammed the bike down in Molly’s back yard and turned to grip Romy’s shoulders. “You okay? I had to pull some pretty serious magic to get us here fast, but I didn’t see you sparking. I’m so sorry—for earlier, and for pulling you in like this.”
She reached out and touched his cheek, just once.
Her voice was quiet, but certain. “There’s a little girl who needs us. I don’t know how I can help, but let’s go see what we can find out.”
Jolie came out of the house, followed by Molly carrying a plate of sandwiches.
“Thanks, Molly,” said Jake. “We may have a long night coming.”
Jolie tugged on Romy’s hand. “Do you know where to find the little girl?”
“Not yet, sweetie.” Romy squatted down. “I need you to tell me a little more about what you see.”
“It’s kind of confusing. I think I’m seeing some now stuff, and some future stuff. She’s in a dark room, and her belly really hurts. I don’t think she’s hungry, though; maybe she’s sick. There’s a big fire in the room, but you come and save her, so that must be a future thing.”
“Okay, that’s a really good start. Can you tell me more about the little girl? How old she is, or what she’s thinking about?”
Jolie frowned. “I heard her talking to her dolly a little. She said ‘baby, don’t be afraid’. Maybe she’s been bad, and somebody put her in a closet, like me, only Molly says little girls can’t be that bad.”
Jake glanced at Molly in approval, and then bent down beside Romy. “Indeed, they can’t. Is she scared?”
“Yeah.” Jolie thought a moment. “But excited, too. Like she’s waiting for something.”
None of this was getting them any closer to finding a little girl about to start a fire. He tried to think about the details his mother tended to pick up in her visions of the future. Emotions, stray thoughts, odd environmental details. “Can you see her at all, Jolie? Her face, or does she maybe call herself a name?”
“No. But I think she’s kind of big. When Romy comes to rescue her, she can’t carry her by herself, and you have to come help.”
Great, he got to be the muscles.
Jolie frowned, confused. “That doesn’t make sense. She’s as big as Romy when you pick her up, but she’s a little girl, just like me.”
Jake grabbed Jolie as her eyes suddenly dilated. He’d seen that countless times from his mother. Jolie clutched her belly and moaned.
“What’s going on, Jake?” Romy looked close to panic.
He wasn’t very happy himself. “She’s sharing sensations with the other little girl.”
Jake tried not to imagine what Jolie would go through if she stayed linked to a small girl in a room full of fire. They needed to find the child, and now.
“It happened once before,” Molly said. “About ten minutes ago. It lasted for almost a minute, and then stopped.” As if on cue, Jolie stopped clutching her belly and looked up.
Romy turned white and grabbed Jake’s arm. “Jolie. How long have you been feeling these belly aches?”
“Since just before dinner, but they hurt more now.”
Jake could see Romy connecting the dots as he watched. She turned to him with big eyes. “It’s not a girl, Jake. I think it’s a woman, and she’s in labor.”
“What’s labor?” Jolie asked.
Molly answered. “It’s when a woman has a baby in her belly, and it’s time for the baby to come out.”
Romy clutched his arm harder. “Carla said her magic hit hard when she gave birth to her babies. If this woman is a fire witch, that could be what triggers the fire Jolie sees. Jake, we have to find her.”
Her urgency exploded against his frustration. “We still have no idea who she is, or where she is.”
“Think, Jake. You said I set off the Sentinel alarms four times as a kid.”
Now he saw it. “And there’s no way she’s a grown fire witch and never set off an alert. She’ll be in Alvin’s files.”
He turned to Molly. “You have a laptop, right? I need to use it.”
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he called home. “Carla, we think the girl might be one of the ones A*shole Alvin gave up on. I need you to log into my private files so I can pull that data faster.” He quickly walked her through his four-step login. “Thanks, Carla. Love you. We’ll let you know as soon as we find her.”
He hung up. Action felt really, really good. “I already researched where all the girls ended up. We can narrow that down to ages likely to be pregnant and start checking the names out.”
Molly flew out of the house, computer in hand. It was old and clunky compared to his baby, but anything with a keyboard would get the job done.
He brute-forced a connection to his home computer and grabbed the data file. Eighty-one girls. Sixty-two still living.
He looked up at Romy. “Let’s assume for now that Jolie’s picking up on someone close by; that gets us to thirty-one names. What’s a reasonable age range for pregnant women?”
“Could be thirteen to fifty, Jake. She’s alone and scared—that doesn’t suggest a husband in the picture.”
His fingers flew. “Okay, that gets us down to nineteen. I have known addresses for half.”
She grabbed his arm. “Wait. If she’s pregnant, she’d have seen a doctor.” Her face collapsed. “Never mind, there’s no way we could figure that out.”
There sure as hell was. “All healthcare visits get run through a billing system. There’s only two big ones in this state. If I cross their records with our nineteen names, maybe we get a match.”
She looked at him like he’d gone totally insane. “Jake, we need to find her tonight. Requesting access to that data would take weeks.”
Jolie doubled over in pain again. Molly held her tight and frowned at Jake. “The contractions are coming faster.”
He shot Romy a look. “We’re not going to ask permission.”
Billing systems had pretty good security. It took him four-and-a-half minutes to hack into the first. He’d picked the system that fed state Medicaid; they covered lots of pregnant women.
He looked up in victory. “I’m in.” Romy, who had been watching over his shoulder, stared at him in utter shock. “You hacked into Medicaid?”
“You weren’t the only one with a misspent youth.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and ported the list of names over. “Here, I need you to read me the names off one at a time. Molly’s computer isn’t fast enough to pull down a lot of data, so I’m going to stay in their system and look up the names.”
Romy still looked stupefied. “This is illegal.”
“Totally. And I have about three minutes before their system locks me out or gets Molly in a lot of trouble, so start reading.”
They got a hit on name number five. Aylen Windwalker, twenty-two. Nine months pregnant and the address on record was three blocks away.
Romy ran for Jake’s bike. “I’ll go. You call the fire department and paramedics.”
It was a reasonable plan. Bullshit. The woman he loved was riding off into action without him while he played secretary. Not very damn likely.
Jake finished backing out of the system he’d hacked and grabbed a tree branch. Normally, he preferred motorbikes to broomsticks, but this was an emergency. Dialing 911, he lifted off and cursed; he could already see flames in the distance.
…

Romy turned the corner toward Aylen’s address and knew she was too late. Flames spurted from the window of a house halfway down the street. Neighbors were already gathering.
She skidded to a halt and ran for the door.
“There’s no one in there, lady,” a bystander yelled. “The woman that lives there moved out weeks ago.”
Romy thought of Jolie doubled over in pain, pulled her shirt over her face, and opened the door. She could see flames licking across the hallway, and a terrified, very pregnant woman behind them.
She could also feel the power inside her, clawing to get loose. Fire was calling to fire.
Jake charged up, pulling on a leather jacket. “I’ll go get her. You get out of here.”
She grabbed his arm. He wasn’t going to burn again on her watch, not if she could help it. “Let me try to move the fire away. Let me try, Jake.”
If the fire called to her, then she could call to the fire. She ran outside the house to the broken living room window and pulled with all the magic inside her. Here I am. Come to me.
Flames exploded out of the living room window. She shoved her hands up and pushed a stream of power toward the sky. The fire followed, delighting in the new fuel source.
She heard the sound of cheers and the clang of arriving fire trucks. Thank God. She couldn’t hold it much longer.
Jake grabbed her shoulders. “Romy, we’re out. You can let go now.”
Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t. I don’t know where to put the magic. It’s going to blow soon. Get the people back.”
He grabbed her arms. “You can. Send it to me. I’ll put it down into the earth.”
No way. Never.
Then he put his hands on her face. “I love you, Romy. Now trust me. I’m going to call the power, and I want you to let it come.”
Jake threw his hands wide and reached for magic.
“I ask the power of earth and land,
Come on out, give me a hand.
Take her magic, make it mine
Two into one, by love’s design.
Gotta do what must be done,
Make it so, Number One.”
Romy felt the fire shifting and trembled. It knew he was there, now, and power called to power. She felt the first helpless fraying of magic headed out of control.
And then the truth of Carla’s words hit her, and she knew what to do. She reached for love, and let it go along with the magic. Power sang out of her and down Jake’s fingers into the ground. Love sang out of her into his heart.
It was a relatively small earthquake, all things considered.