Page 5 of Hexy Bear
"How about right now?" Mara suggested, glancing around the market at the other vendors who were beginning to pack up their stalls as the afternoon light started to fade. "I can close up early and come back to your place. Tilly and I can work on some basic grounding exercises while you tell me more about these nightmares and whatever happened at the sanctuary."
"Can we, Daddy?" Tilly asked eagerly. "Please? I promise I'll be good and I won't make anything explode."
"You've never made anything explode," Griff said, though his tone suggested this was more luck than design. "All right. But we're taking this slowly, and if anything feels dangerous or wrong, we stop immediately."
"Agreed," Mara said, already beginning to pack her most sensitive herbs into spelled containers that would keep them calm during transport. "Though I should warn you, Griff. If something is targeting children with emerging magical abilities, then isolating Tilly isn't going to keep her safe. It's going to make her more vulnerable."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that whatever broke your founder ward last night isn't done with this town," Mara said, securing the last of her supplies. "And if it's anything like what I faced in Boston, then our best defense is going to be working together, not trying to face it alone."
As they left the market together, Tilly skipping between them with more joy than she'd shown since arriving, Mara felt something she hadn't experienced in months: hope. Not just for her own future, but for the family she was already beginning to think of as hers to protect.
Whatever had driven her from Boston had made a crucial mistake. It had followed her to a place where she wasn't alone, where her magic was welcomed instead of feared, and where a six-year-old girl with extraordinary power needed exactly the kind of guidance Mara had been born to provide.
The lavender sachets in her bag had finally stopped screaming, settling into the quiet contentment of herbs that knew they were exactly where they belonged.
THREE
MARA
Tilly was finger-painting with shadows.
Mara discovered this unsettling fact when she arrived at the Cooper house the next morning, her arms full of carefully selected herbs and her mind buzzing with lesson plans for helping a six-year-old learn magical control. She'd spent most of the night researching grounding techniques for children with multiple magical influences, cross-referencing her grandmother's journals with modern theories about supernatural education.
Deep down, she was also looking forward to seeing Griff again, her fae magic and heart buzzing under her skin. She told herself that she had to take this slow.
What she hadn't prepared for was finding her new student sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, her small hands moving through the air as if manipulating invisible clay while actual shadows danced and swirled around her fingers like living things.
"Good morning, Miss Mara," Tilly said without looking up from her work. "The shadow friends want to show you something, but Daddy says they're not real friends and I shouldn't talk to them."
Griff emerged from the kitchen carrying two cups of coffee, his expression hovering somewhere between exhaustion and barely controlled panic. He'd clearly been up all night, his dark hair more disheveled than usual and his brown eyes shadowed with worry.
"It started about an hour ago," he said, handing Mara one of the mugs with hands that trembled slightly. "She woke up talking about 'messages' and 'warnings,' and then... this."
He gestured helplessly at his daughter, who was now coaxing the shadows into forming what looked like crude stick figures. The figures moved with their own volition, acting out some sort of scene that involved a lot of dramatic gesturing and what appeared to be running away from something much larger and more threatening.
"They're not trying to hurt anyone," Tilly said, finally looking up with eyes that held far too much ancient knowledge for someone who still needed help tying her shoes. "They're trying to warn us. But they can't talk the normal way because they're not alive anymore. They're just... pieces of people who used to be alive, and they're really, really scared."
Mara set down her coffee and crouched beside Tilly, studying the shadow figures with her enhanced senses. What she felt made her breath catch in her throat. The entities weren't malevolent or chaotic. They were desperate, their essence fractured and incomplete but driven by what felt like protective instincts.
"What are they trying to warn us about, sweetheart?" Mara asked gently.
The shadow figures suddenly moved faster, their stick-like forms clustering together as if seeking protection. Then they pointed toward the window that faced the forest preserve, their movements urgent and unmistakably fearful.
"Something bad is coming," Tilly whispered. "Something that hurt them and turned them into pieces. And it wants to hurt more people, but especially people like us. People with the old magic in their blood."
Before Mara could ask what she meant by "old magic," the front door burst open without warning. Griff spun toward the entrance, his bear surging close to the surface as protective instincts flared, but relaxed slightly when he saw Leo Maddox striding into the house with the purposeful energy of someone dealing with an escalating crisis.
"We've got a problem," Leo announced without preamble, then stopped short when he noticed the shadow figures still dancing around Tilly's hands. "Well, that's new."
"Leo," Griff said, his voice carefully controlled. "Meet our supernatural complications."
"The shadow friends aren't complications," Tilly protested. "They're trying to help. But something's making them scared to get too close during the day. They're stronger at night, but even then they can't stay very long because the bad thing is looking for them."
Leo's golden eyes sharpened as he studied the entities with the focus of someone trained to assess supernatural threats. "Dr. Thorne is going to want to see this. We called Aerin in from the research facility as soon as the readings from the sanctuary got worse."
"Worse how?" Mara asked, though she suspected she didn't want to hear the answer.
