Chapter 6: Aerobics and Ancestral Magic
The silence Brigid left behind was a physical weight in the kitchen. Jan stared at the empty chair, her hand still hovering where her sister’s shoulder had been. Godfrey whined again and laid his head on his paws, his brown eyes tracking nothing.
“She’ll be back,” Annie said again, her tone infuriatingly matter-of-fact as she set a chipped cup of tea in front of Jan. “Breathes all the air out of the room and pops back in like a cork. Now.” She clapped her hands together, the sound sharp in the quiet. “You. Fitness instructor. Stacy. Show me these moves. My mother is at vespers for an hour. I want to feel my blood move.”
Stacy, ever the professional, shook off the disorientation. “Right. Okay. Clear a little space.” She pushed the heavy table a few inches towards the hearth, the legs scraping on stone. Annie watched, fascinated, as Stacy kicked off her modern boots. In her socks and 19th-century dress, she looked absurd, but her posture shifted into what Jan called ‘Coach Mode.’
“We’ll start simple. Follow me. Jumping jacks.” Stacy demonstrated, her movements crisp and powerful even confined by the long skirt. “Arms out, feet apart. Then together.”
Annie mimicked her, her calico dress swishing. Her first attempts were clumsy, but she was a quick study, her natural athleticism evident. Soon she was moving in time, her face flushing with effort, a wild grin spreading across her features. “It’s like a reel for one!” she laughed, her breath coming quicker.
“High knees, now. Bring them up.” Stacy jogged in place, knees punching towards the ceiling. Annie followed, her laugh turning to grunts of effort. The firelight caught the sheen of sweat on her neck. After a minute, Stacy moved on. “Squats. Feet shoulder-width, back straight, lower like you’re sitting in a chair.”
Annie positioned herself, eyeing Stacy’s form. She sank down, her dress pulling tight across her thighs and backside. She rose, then sank again, deeper. A new, considering look entered her green eyes. “And this… strengthens the legs?”
“And the glutes. The backside,” Stacy clarified, doing another perfect squat.
“I see.” Annie held the bottom position, then rose slowly. She didn’t step back into line. She stepped closer to Stacy, entering her space. The energy in the room shifted, the heat from the hearth seeming to concentrate around them. “What do you usually do for exercise, Stacy? In your time?”
“Running. Weight training. Krav Maga.” Stacy held her ground, though her pulse jumped. Annie’s proximity was intense.
“Sounds very… disciplined.” Annie’s smile turned wicked. “Do you ever exercise just for the feeling? The pure, stupid rush of it?”
Before Stacy could answer, Annie reached out. Her hand, calloused and warm, landed on Stacy’s hip. It wasn’t a rough grab, but a claiming press of fingers. And with the touch came a wave of sensation—a hot, liquid pulse that went straight to Stacy’s core, making her knees weaken and her cunt clench with sudden, shocking need.
It was familiar. It was Jan’s magic, but rawer, less refined, a wildfire compared to Jan’s focused blaze.
Stacy gasped, her hand flying out to brace against the table. “Jesus. You’re… you’re related to Jan.”
Annie’s grin was all triumph. “She’s my great-great-something. The magic skips, changes, but the root… the root is the same.” Her other hand came up, fingers tracing a burning line down Stacy’s taut stomach. “Now. Let me show you my favorite workout.”
She pushed, and Stacy, her body singing with awakened hunger, let herself be guided backwards until the edge of the solid oak table met her thighs. Annie closed the final distance, her body pressing Stacy against the unyielding wood. Her mouth found Stacy’s neck, not kissing, but biting, a sharp nip followed by the soothing swirl of her tongue.
“Fuck,” Stacy breathed, her head falling back. Her hands came up, tangling in the brilliant riot of Annie’s red hair, pulling her closer.
Annie’s hand slipped from Stacy’s stomach, diving under the waistband of her anachronistic trousers. There was no finesse, no teasing. Her fingers slid through coarse curls and found slick, swollen heat. Stacy was drenched, her folds slippery and hot.
“I can feel how tight you are,” Annie whispered against her throat, her voice a husky rasp. Her thumb found Stacy’s clit, circling the hardened nub with a rough, perfect pressure that made Stacy’s hips jerk. “All that discipline… for this. To be this wet for a stranger in a kitchen.”
She plunged two fingers inside Stacy’s cunt without warning, a deep, curling invasion that stole Stacy’s breath. They were thick, skilled fingers, pumping in and out with a relentless rhythm that matched the pounding of Stacy’s heart. The table rocked slightly with each thrust.
“Come on, then,” Annie growled, her own breathing ragged. “Let’s see if you can come before my mother comes back. Bet you can. Bet you’re the type who comes fast and hard when someone finally gives you permission not to think.”
Stacy was beyond words. Pleasure, coiling and electric, wound tight in her belly. Annie’s fingers fucked her deeply, the heel of her palm grinding against her clit with every stroke. The sounds were obscene—the wet, rhythmic slap of skin, Stacy’s choked moans, Annie’s satisfied grunts. Stacy’s vision speckled. She clutched at Annie, nails digging into the wool of her dress, her hips meeting every thrust, fucking herself on those relentless fingers.
“That’s it,” Annie urged, her own body pressed flush against Stacy’s, her breath hot. “Give it up. Let go.”
The coil snapped. Stacy came with a shattered cry, her cunt clamping down violently around Annie’s fingers, waves of raw sensation pulsing through her. Annie held her through it, fingers still working, milking the orgasm until Stacy sagged against the table, boneless and gasping.
Annie slowly withdrew her glistening fingers. She brought them to her mouth, sucking them clean with a slow, deliberate obscenity, her eyes locked on Stacy’s. “Aye,” she said, licking her lips. “That’s a proper workout.”
A sharp, metallic ting cut through the post-coital haze.
Johnny stood by the cold hearth, not looking at them. He was holding his brass sextant, but he was also holding Jan’s green river stone. It was sparking, not with its usual gentle green, but with violent, erratic bursts of crimson and sickly yellow. He was staring at the space where Brigid had vanished, his eyes seeing equations instead of air.
“Johnny?” Jan’s voice was wary. She’d been watching Annie and Stacy with a mix of kinship and unease, but now her focus was on her brother.
“It’s not a journal,” Johnny said, his voice flat, detached. “It’s a suture. A scalpel.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Archimedes Society doesn’t make mistakes. They don’t create artifacts that ‘have a mind of their own.’” He finally turned, his blue eyes cold. “They create tools with specific, brutal functions. This wasn’t designed for study. It was designed for editing.”
He held up the sparking river stone. “The ward-breaking spell is reacting to a containment field. Not around the journal. Inside it. Brigid said it was fused to her. It’s not just reading her memories or pulling her to them. It’s cataloging her emotional resonance at key nodal points in her personal timeline. Her grief for our father. Her love for Aisling. Her guilt.”
Jan went pale. “Cataloging for what?”
“For excision.” The word hung in the smoky air. “To sever a person from the memories that define them. To turn a complex emotional being into a blank slate. A solved equation.”
Stacy, still leaning against the table, straightened up, pulling her clothes right. Her face was flushed but her eyes were hard. “Who would do that? And why to Brigid?”
“I don’t know the who. The why…” Johnny’s gaze went distant again. “Brigid’s power is vast and rooted in profound empathy. Her connection to Aisling creates a stable bridge across a deep magical blood feud. In the wrong hands, a being with that much power, but none of the emotional anchors that guide her morality… would be a weapon of unimaginable precision.”
Jan stood up so fast her chair screeched. “We have to get it off her. Now.”
“We can’t,” Johnny said, a flicker of frustration finally showing. “It’s fused on a level beyond my skill. Removing it would likely kill her. Or shred her psyche completely.”
“So what do we do?”
“We find the operator. The one who designed the suture. We make them undo it.”
From the doorway, a new voice spoke, dry and sharp as flint. “And how do you propose to do that, time-wizard?”
Annie’s mother, Maeve, stood there. She was older, her hair steel-grey in a severe bun, her green eyes missing nothing—the displaced strangers, her daughter’s disheveled state, the charged air. She held a worn rosary in one hand, but the other hand was held slightly away from her body, fingers curled as if ready to sculpt the air itself.
“Mother,” Annie said, not sounding chastised, but wary.
Maeve ignored her, her eyes on Johnny. “You’ve brought a storm under my roof. That young woman—Brigid—she’s of my blood. I feel the tear in her. It smells of old paper and despair.”
Johnny faced her. “You’re the previous Guardian. You know the deeper currents. Has there been word of an Archimedes splinter group? Ones who’ve forsaken benevolence for… purification?”
Maeve was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the pop of the peat in the hearth. “There are always whispers,” she said at last. “Of ones who look at a tangled knot and think only to cut it, not to patiently untie it. They call themselves the Lancet Men. Myth, to most.”
“They’re not myth,” Johnny said. “They have Brigid."
“They have Brigid,” Johnny repeated, the words settling like stones in the quiet kitchen.
Maeve’s knuckles whitened around her rosary. “The Lancet Men are but whispers in dark corners. If they are real, and they have her, then your sister is being unmade.” Her gaze, flinty and ancient, swept over them. “You cannot fight a surgical strike with a cudgel. You need a finer tool.”
“We have to find her now,” Jan said, her voice cracking. She fumbled for her compact, snapping it open. The mirror swirled not with reflection, but with frantic, darting streaks of silver light. “I can’t get a lock. She’s moving too fast, jumping too erratically.”
“She’s not in control of the jumps,” Johnny said, his fingers flying over the sextant’s dials. “The suture is cataloging. It’s taking samples of her foundational emotional states. It’s harvesting her.”
A violent shudder passed through Godfrey. He stood, his fur bristling, and let out a low growl directed at nothing, at everything. The magic in the air curdled around him.
The void between moments was not empty. It was a cacophony of compressed sensations—a scream of brakes, the scent of iodine, the taste of birthday cake, the feel of a small, trusting hand in hers. Brigid tumbled through the noise, a leaf in a hurricane.
Her feet hit solid ground. The smell of floor wax and cheap perfume assaulted her. Linoleum, scuffed and beige, stretched under her. Lockers, painted a dismal green, lined the walls.
A high school hallway.
Down the way, a trio leaned in a familiar, lazy knot. A younger Jan, all limbs and loud, shrieking laughter, her red hair a brilliant shock. A Stacy with pink streaks in her dark ponytail, shaking her head at something. Hank, taller, softer at the edges, holding a smoldering joint like a sacrament.
Brigid’s heart hammered against her ribs. “Jan!” The name was a torn whisper.
Jan’s head turned. Her laughing eyes, so much lighter without the weight of the Green Moon, scanned the hallway. They passed over Brigid, then snapped back. A frown creased her brow. A flicker of something—not recognition, but a sense of dislocation, of a reflection in a warped mirror—passed over her features.
The journal seared her palm, a white-hot brand.
“No, wait—” Brigid pleaded, to the journal, to the timeline, to anyone.
The hallway dissolved into a smear of color and sound.
Darkness. The hiss of rain on asphalt. A cold, relentless downpour soaked her instantly. Headlights cut through the gloom, illuminating a car angled on the shoulder, its hazard lights blinking a frantic orange rhythm.
A man was waving his arms, his face a mask of panic. “Help! Please, someone!”
Brigid ran. Her medical training bypassed the chaos in her mind. The back passenger door was open. Inside, a woman was half-lying on the seat, her face contorted in pain, her legs drawn up. Her dress was soaked with amniotic fluid and rain.
“The baby’s coming,” the woman gasped, her eyes wide with terror. “It’s too fast.”
“It’s okay, I’m here to help,” Brigid said, her voice miraculously calm. She climbed in, the journal on her hand a heavy, awkward weight. “What’s your name?”
“Siobhan,” the woman panted. “Shiv. My husband, Marty—”
“I’m here, love, I’m right here,” the man said, crowding the doorway, his face pale under the dome light. “The ambulance is miles out, the storm—”
“We don’t have miles,” Brigid said. Her hands were steady. She guided Shiv onto her side, checking. The baby’s head was crowning. “Okay, Shiv. On the next contraction, I need you to push. Marty, hold her hand.”
It was a blur of instinct and pressure. The storm raged outside. Shiv screamed, a raw, powerful sound, and pushed. Brigid supported, guided, her world narrowing to this moment, this life entering the world in the back of a sedan. The baby slid into her waiting hands, small and slick and perfect. A gush of fluid. A shuddering cry that cut through the rain.
“It’s a boy,” Brigid whispered, her own eyes filling. She cleared his mouth, wrapped him in Marty’s hastily offered jacket, and placed him on Shiv’s chest.
“Oh, God. Oh, thank you.” Marty was crying, laughing, kissing Shiv’s sweaty forehead. “You amazing, beautiful woman. Thank you.” He looked at Brigid, his face awash with gratitude and adrenaline. “What’s your name? How can we ever thank you?”
“Brigid,” she said automatically, smiling through her tears. Then she truly looked at him. The younger face, the less-weary eyes, the hair without silver. She looked at the exhausted, radiant woman holding the newborn.
Shiv and Marty. Her parents.
The newborn, Johnny, wailed against his mother’s skin.
The memory from the suburban street crashed over her: her father’s hand on her shoulders. I’m proud of the woman you became. This was the moment. He wasn’t remembering a future daughter. He was meeting her, now, in his past.
“I… you’re welcome,” she stammered, backing out of the car. The rain lashed her face, mingling with her tears. “Congratulations. He’s beautiful.”
She turned and ran into the drowning night, the journal pulling her back into the torrent before their confusion could turn to questions.
The kitchen in 1899 was a tomb of tense silence. Johnny’s instruments whirred. Jan stared into her compact, tears of frustration tracking through the dust on her cheeks. Stacy reloaded her Colt with methodical, angry clicks.
Maeve closed her eyes, her lips moving in silent prayer or spell. Annie stood by the hearth, her earlier bravado gone, watching the strangers who were her blood with solemn intensity.
Godfrey’s growl turned into a sharp, pained yelp. He flinched as if struck.
At the same moment, Johnny’s sextant emitted a high-pitched whine. Jan’s compact mirror shattered with a sound like ice breaking, the silver liquid inside evaporating into foul-smelling smoke.
“A spike,” Johnny breathed, his eyes wide. “A massive, localized temporal spike. It just… stabilized a paradox.”
“Where?” Stacy demanded, snapping the cylinder shut.
“Chicago. 1999. A roadside.” Johnny’s face was ashen. “The energy signature… it’s Brigid’s, but it’s intertwined with two others. A birth.”
Jan’s hand went to her mouth. “Johnny’s birth. She must have been there.”
Maeve’s eyes snapped open. “She is stitching herself into the foundation of your family. The Lancet Men’s tool uses her love as the thread. Every time it pulls her to a moment of profound connection, it maps that connection. To sever it later.”
“We have to go there. Now,” Jan said.
“You cannot,” Maeve said, her voice final. “You are a rogue element. Your presence at such a anchored moment could unravel it. The suture would detect you as an anomaly and may react violently. It could kill her in the process of trying to sever the new knot.”
“So what do we do?” Stacy asked, her voice dangerously calm.
Annie moved away from the hearth. She walked to a low cupboard, opened it, and pulled out a small, felt-wrapped bundle. She unfolded it on the table, revealing a simple bronze pendant on a leather cord. It was etched with a single, complex spiral.
“You find the weaver, not the thread,” Annie said, picking up the pendant. “The Lancet Men use math as a blade. My grandmother’s magic is of the land and blood. This,” she held it up, “finds blood. It will lead you to the one who shares your sister’s specific magical signature most closely. The architect of that.” She pointed at the space where Brigid had vanished.
Annie tossed the pendant to Johnny. He caught it, and it immediately grew warm in his hand, the bronze glowing with a faint, inner light. “It will get warmer as you get closer. Follow it. Find your sister from the future. She holds the other end of the knot.”
Johnny nodded, gripping the pendant. He looked at Jan and Stacy. “We split up. You two stay here, a fixed point. The journal may return her here, as it’s done before. Protect the anchor. I’ll find whoever is pulling her around and learn what they know.”
“And if the Lancet Men come here first?” Stacy asked, her hand resting on her pistol.
Annie smiled, a fierce, wild expression. She picked up the iron poker from the hearth. It glowed a sudden, furious red in her grip, though it had been resting in cool ashes. “Then they’ll learn why the Féth Fiada has a guardian in the first place.”
The pendant in Johnny’s hand pulsed like a heartbeat. He gave a last, sharp look to his sister, then to Stacy. Without another word, he turned and strode out of the kitchen, into the damp Irish night. The hunt for the weaver had begun.