Authors: Debora Geary
And if you had to wade through crap, you might as well dress for
it.
Lizard hit the fourth floor gasping for air.
Dammit.
Thanks to her cushy job, she now had the lung capacity of an
emphysemic eighty-year-old.
Life
just got better and better.
She’d
probably have to go to one of those spinning classes or something, where skinny
type-A women peddled as fast as humanly possible without going anywhere.
Seriously—who peddled a hundred miles an hour to nowhere?
Stupid fracking day.
“Good morning,” said an amused voice over her shoulder.
Nice delinquent regalia there.
Lizard scowled down at her outfit.
It had taken some serious work to find it at the bottom of
her closet.
“Josh said I could
wear whatever I wanted.”
Jamie looked down at his jeans and T-shirt.
“He said I could, too.”
Wait.
What the hell
was Jamie doing in Josh’s building?
Why are you here?
“I heard there’s a meeting to invest in your maps idea.
If you’re here, I figure my
information’s probably right.”
Lizard stared.
The
investors are supposed to be rich old guys in suits.
Jamie looked down at his clothes again and grinned.
Apparently Josh isn’t as picky about
his investors as you are.
Okay, first Elsie, and now Jamie.
This was ridiculous.
“This could be a big, fat, stinking failure.
You have a baby coming and everything.
You can’t afford to do this.”
Did no one in Witch Central have any
brains?
An arm settled around her shoulders.
“We try not to scare the investors away before they even get
in the room.”
Josh reached out to
shake Jamie’s hand.
“I’m not taking money from my friends.”
Lizard wiggled out from under his arm,
turned, and glared, ready to do battle.
“I thought you said you knew rich guys.”
Josh shrugged.
“Anyone
with boatloads more money than I have qualifies as rich.
Come on in to the meeting
room—there are several other people here already.”
He grinned wryly.
“It’d be great if you could stash the
‘big, fat, stinking failure’ line for a bit.
Not everyone in the room knows you as well as Jamie does.”
Most of his words just trailed in one of her ears and out the
other.
Lizard was still stuck on
his first sentence.
Jamie had more
money than Josh?
Yup.
Even if you
crash and burn, we’ll still be able to feed the baby.
Jamie’s mind was a mix of humor, empathy, and
kick-in-the-pants.
Thanks for
caring, though.
Now get over yourself
and head into that room and pretend you actually know how to sell stuff.
She
did
know how to sell stuff.
Claire Jameson had made an offer on a house.
She was a freaking selling genius.
Better.
Jamie grinned.
Lizard scowled.
What
is this, the standard-issue witch pep talk?
It was oddly effective, but that was beside the point.
Hell, no.
Jamie snickered and
laid a hand on her shoulder.
You
seem to require the level-three version.
She wasn’t going to ask how many levels there were.
For a laid-back guy in jeans, Jamie
could be really pushy—and apparently he wasn’t even trying hard yet.
Crap.
Her pushy guy suddenly sounded oddly
contrite.
Sorry, I think I’ve
just blown your cover.
He
shrugged a shoulder in Josh’s direction.
Lizard looked—and found Josh staring at her, eyes wide
with curiosity.
“You can do that
same mindreading thing Jamie can do?”
Holy fracking hell.
She heard her mouth babbling instinctive denial, but it was obvious from
Josh’s mind that she was wasting her time.
Lizard ground to a halt, preparing to hit and run.
“I don’t know how you found out about
that, but I’m not a freak.
And I’m
not invading your mind.
And if you
tell anyone, they’ll just lock you up and call you crazy.”
Or lock
her
up, but she could jibber in terror about that later.
His eyes narrowed, puzzled and… hurt.
“I know that.
Jamie explained how it works, and the ethics and everything.”
His face crinkled into a
half-smile.
“And if you don’t want
people to know, you should stop having mind-conversations in public.”
She knew that.
She
knew the risks.
She’d been sucked
in by the fake safety of Witch Central and a neighborhood of people who all
thought witches were groovy.
Jamie’s thought bounced hard through her mind barriers.
Don’t be an idiot.
Read him, Lizard.
Her reply was white-hot fury.
Screw that.
You got me into this mess.
Josh reached out a hand, twining his fingers in hers.
“I don’t think you’re a freak.
I was just thinking that if you can do
what he can do, that might be useful in the meeting.
You can monitor my thoughts, right?
The outside ones I want you to hear?”
Lizard stared.
The
guy was holding hands with a mind witch ready to cook his neurons, and talking
business strategy.
“You know I
could fry your brain or make you dance like a chicken, right?”
Probably.
Maybe.
His grin was only a little wobbly.
“I’d rather you didn’t.
We have a bunch of suits in there who might find the chicken
dance a little frightening.”
The suits.
Oh,
God.
She’d forgotten about the
suits.
~ ~ ~
Josh headed to the meeting room, Lizard’s hand firmly clasped in
his.
The suits awaited, and he
wasn’t convinced she would walk into the room unaided.
And damn, he had other things on his mind.
She was a witch.
A totally hot witch, even in a grunge
leather jacket and jeans with more holes than fabric.
He was pretty sure the outfit wasn’t for his benefit.
Or rather, he wasn’t supposed to
appreciate it.
Pretty smart for a non-witch,
said Jamie’s voice in his head, amused.
Okay, that was still going to take some getting used to.
He put together a thought and tried to
shove it Jamie’s general direction.
She can really do this?
She can.
His witch investor paused a moment.
She’s a lot better at it than I am,
actually.
And just so you have the
lay of the land, she works for the best mind witch in town, with the possible
exception of my four-year-old nephew.
Wow.
Josh laid a
hand on the meeting room door, trying to get his legendary brain back in the
game.
He had a roomful of suits to
woo.
I’m going to have some
questions for you later.
Jamie nodded.
Figured that.
You earned them—you did good back there.
Josh walked through the door on autopilot and started shaking
hands.
Could she really make me
do the chicken dance?
Jamie’s mind rang with laughter.
Probably.
And if
that’s your first question, you’ll do just fine.
Welcome to Witch Central.
Whatever the hell that was.
However, if Lizard belonged to some kind of semi-secret
witch collective, then he was going to learn a whole lot about it.
After the meeting.
He turned around, looking for Lizard—and spotted her sexy
blonde head halfway across the room, making nice with one of his grumpier
investors.
He watched the man’s
eyes shift from disapproving, to wary, to curious, to downright adulation, all
in about three sentences.
The world was discovering what he’d known for weeks now.
She was irresistible.
Time to get this party started.
He stepped to the head of the table, pulling on a layer of
authority.
Bless Mom for sending
him to acting class—it was way more useful than business school.
“Good morning, everyone.
If you want to find your way to a seat,
we have a pretty cool new toy to show you.”
Danny winked from his seat from over by the computer
controls.
He’d be driving, while
Josh did most of the talking.
And
if they were really lucky, Lizard would forget she hated meetings and wow the
suits with her enthusiasm for matching people with homes.
He was pretty sure she had exactly no
idea how convincing she could be.
He still woke up at night with the words of her “stupid” poem driving
through his brain.
She’d been sheer guts dressed in purple and black.
Danny cleared his throat, a knowing grin on his face.
There was a tableful of investors, all
sitting politely in chairs, waiting.
Damn.
He never unraveled
in meetings.
“Thanks for coming,
everyone.
I could bore you all
with a spiel up here, but I don’t think this new project needs any gloss.
I hope you’ll agree that it has the
potential to change how people find a place to live.”
He signaled at Danny to launch their prototype.
“This is our neighborhood matchmaking
tool.
Up until now, realtors have
mostly relied on the attributes of a house to match clients with homes.
Budget, desired number of bedrooms,
double sinks in the bathroom.”
He was finding his groove now.
“Survey research suggests that clients under forty are the
fastest growing demographic in real estate right now.”
He made eye contact with his audience,
reminding them he was squarely in that group.
“And we don’t care about double sinks.
We want a neighborhood with the right
vibe, the right amenities.”
He pulled up a standard real-estate listing.
“But realtors are still working with
old tools, ones that tell them about roofing materials and walk-in-closet
dimensions.
They don’t have data
on the Thai restaurant around the corner or the pick-up Frisbee games in the
park or the hell commute when it snows.
“We’re looking to change all of that.”
He kept talking, trusting Danny to drive through some of
their cooler features as he explained how realtors would have an entirely new
toolset at their fingertips—and be willing to pay handsomely for it to
serve the fast-growing group of hip, young clients with money to spend.
He surveyed the room as he walked through the features
overview.
About half were on board
already.
That was a good
start.
Time to head after the
rest.
Starting with the most skeptical guy in the room—and the
one with the deepest pockets.
Josh
eyed his target.
“I’m sure you
have questions.”
Chester Satchell raised an eyebrow.
“How do you know anyone will use it?
My real estate agent can’t even use a
laptop.”
“Yup.
Some people
are dinosaurs.”
Josh grinned,
knowing full well Chester was one of them.
“But we don’t need everyone.
We’re looking to lease this exclusively by market—one
real estate practice in each metro area.”
Chester grunted.
And then he did the one thing Josh had been hoping to avoid.
He zoned in on Lizard.
“You don’t look like a realtor.”