Authors: Debora Geary
Four pots of spaghetti sauce were hard to miss.
“Did Elsie get a chance to drop off
whatever green stuff she thought you needed?”
It amused Nat to watch her husband and her intern hotly
debate squished herbs.
“Mmmm.”
He stirred
and sniffed, distracted.
“Nell says she’ll be here soon with plates and noodles.”
She chuckled, pretty sure he wasn’t
hearing her.
It didn’t matter much
anyhow—Witch Central could pull off big-dinner logistics in their
sleep.
“The workshop went well
today.
We danced naked in the
street.”
“Mmm—“
He
turned around, laughing.
“You
think I’m going to miss the word ‘naked’ in a sentence?
Nice try.
How’d Elsie do?”
Nat smiled, grateful for the smells, the solid, good-humored
presence of her husband, and the simple, but quietly successful day she got to
report on.
“Beautifully.
It’s not easy to get twelve strangers
talking to each other, and she was just lovely.
You could see the psychologist at work, but mostly you could
just see her genuine interest in every person in the room.
She made them each believe they
mattered.”
He came over and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“She learned that from you.”
“She does it differently.”
And that had been fascinating.
“A lot more words.
I tend
to head straight for downward dog.
She got everyone talking first.
It was fun to watch.”
“Not everyone would hand over their yoga studio to someone else
so easily.”
Jamie set a small bowl
of sauce-drowned noodles in front of her.
“Here, have an appetizer.”
Nat tried not to drool.
“She didn’t take over.
I
thought she might, but she gently pushed and nudged and moved us all along to where
she wanted us to go, all while looking like one of the crowd.”
She took her first bite of heaven on a
fork and let the tomato-y goodness swirl.
“Kind of like another witch I know.”
Her husband tried to pull off innocence and failed miserably.
She grinned.
“Does
Josh know you’re on his side yet?”
He shook his head, chuckling.
“I don’t think so.
And he might not thank me for this.
Full immersion in Witch Central isn’t for the fainthearted.”
She was well aware of that.
And darned sure her husband didn’t offer his tomato sauce up
in service of just anyone.
“You
really like him.”
His lips twitched.
“I really like Lizard.”
Nat laughed—it was hardly news that her husband had a huge
soft spot for their feisty blonde poet.
“
She
definitely might not thank you for this.”
He winced.
“I
know.
But I already totally blew
it by spilling the beans about her mind magic, so I’m not sure she can get much
madder at me.”
His eyes held a
good-sized dose of self-recrimination.
“That was sloppy, even for me.”
Her husband had grown up in a world where magic was an open
secret—where people either easily overlooked visible power or embraced
it.
Nat reached her hand out in
comfort.
“Sometimes things happen
for a reason.
Maybe Josh needed to
know, and you were just a convenient messenger.”
“Maybe.”
Jamie
swiped a bite of her noodles, recriminations over.
“Or maybe I’m just a witch with a big mouth, but either way,
that cat’s not going back in the bag.”
His eyes twinkled.
“So I
might as well throw in the dog and the pony too.”
Nat grinned as four huge plates of noodles thunked onto the
table.
“I think the dog and pony
are on their way.”
She got up from
her chair—Aervyn occasionally still missed, especially with noodles.
Apparently spaghetti was as squirmy to
teleport as it was to eat with a fork.
Jamie kissed her cheek and headed for the stove.
“If you see Josh, tell him to come grab
a plate.
He probably wants to
finish before Lizard shows up.
Less for her to throw at him that way.”
Nat felt the giggles shake her growing belly.
“You just hope it’s him she’ll be
aiming at.”
~ ~ ~
Lizard walked in the door of Jamie and Nat’s house—and
froze.
The place was full of
people, and way too many of them had her name on their minds.
It was a freaking herd of meddling witches.
She marched back to the kitchen, found
the most likely culprit stirring his spaghetti sauce on the stove, and slammed
her huge tray of biscuits down on the counter beside him.
“Why is everyone here waiting for me to
arrive?”
Jamie looked a little uncomfortable.
“They aren’t, exactly.”
Sometimes her best delinquent scowl was still useful.
Lizard planted her feet, turned it on,
and let float her pretty serious intention to kick him in the knees.
It didn’t help any that his initial reaction was amusement.
In her next life, she wanted to come
back mean, ugly, and bigger than Freddie.
But since none of those things were true in this life, Lizard used what
she had.
Don’t mess with
me.
What the hell’s going on?
She sent it with about three times the
necessary force.
Jamie winced.
Sorry.
On all fronts.
He paused a moment, and then touched her
arm.
I invited Josh.
Her first instincts involved beating him up with a tray.
Or possibly a cast-iron frying
pan—rumor had it that Sullivans had pretty hard heads.
He winced again—she wasn’t thinking quietly.
And then looked over her shoulder and
turned slightly green.
Oh,
shit.
This part wasn’t my idea, I
promise.
Lizard whirled around.
And saw Jennie.
And
Josh.
And some old dude who had a
camera as big as his head.
Pointed
at her face.
He took three steps toward her, fingers madly clicking.
“Perfect.
Jennie, she’s perfect.
Do that ‘blow the place all to hell’ look again, sweetheart.”
He got the look he wanted—right before she yanked the
camera out of his hands.
“I don’t
know who the hell you are, but I’m nobody’s ‘sweetheart.’
And you have no right to take my
picture.”
He glared.
“Art
always has a right.”
The people in her poetry class spouted that kind of crap all the
time.
“Not when it’s my face, you
don’t.”
She looked at the camera
in her hands.
Big.
Expensive.
And he loved it—that much she could read easily.
Excellent—when you were a
ninety-pound weakling, sometimes revenge had to come in inventive
packages.
Her eyes didn’t move from the old man’s.
“Josh, do you know how to erase
pictures from this beast?”
“Nope.”
His voice
sounded like she’d asked for ketchup with her fries.
“Jennie?”
“I do,” said Jennie, sounding amused.
“But it’s not worth my life to touch it.”
Fine.
They’d do
this the hard way. She glared at the old man.
“Tell me how to delete files, or I dump the camera into
Jamie’s spaghetti sauce.”
It would
serve them both right.
His eyes were piercing and cantankerous, just like they’d been
when he walked in—but they also held something else now.
Respect.
And just a tinge of fear.
“No point ruining good sauce.
Or a thirty-thousand-dollar Hasselbad.”
Holy crap.
Lizard
got a much better grip on the camera.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Charlie Tosh.”
He
waited, like she should know who the hell he was.
She had no idea, but she wasn’t entirely stupid.
“You a famous photographer like
Jennie?”
“Some say I’m better than she is.”
Now his eyes held pride.
And challenge.
“You let me develop the film I just shot.
I’ll show you exactly how good I am.”
No.
She had enough
people seeing her naked these days without adding some stranger to the
mix.
And it figured that the
camera took freaking film.
Old
school fit the old guy.
She handed
back the camera, temper leaking away—for some reason, it never lasted
quite long enough.
“Please don’t.”
He just looked at her for a long moment, camera nestled in his
hands.
And then he pushed a few
buttons, waited for the whirring noise from hell to stop, and popped open the
back of his camera.
He handed her the roll of film.
“If you ever want to see the truth, Jennie can probably do a
decent job of developing those for you.
Got a couple of good ones of my great-nephew on there too.”
Great-nephew?
Lizard’s eyes slid to Josh.
He just shrugged.
“None of this was my idea, I swear.”
Yeah.
She was
hearing that from way too many people lately.
Fine.
Given the
choices in this place, she was going with the cranky photographer.
She grabbed two plates from the counter
and held one out to Charlie.
“Hungry?”
~ ~ ~
Elsie watched her roommate walk off with the grumpy old stranger,
still slightly confused about what was going on.
She looked over at Caro, standing beside her.
“What was that all about?”
Mind witches tended to know things.
Caro shrugged.
“Not
sure.”
She grinned.
“But I’m glad there’s still spaghetti
sauce to eat.
My date would have
been upset if Lizard’s temper tantrum had ruined his dinner.”
“Nuh, uh.”
Aervyn’s
hand slid into Caro’s.
“Uncle
Jamie would’a ported the camera before that happened, because he knows I’m a
really hungry witch.”
Elsie smiled at her pint-sized friend.
One of the things she’d found most shocking about Witch
Central was the sheer volume of food a hungry witch could consume.
“Do you need two plates, superboy?”
“Nope.
I already
have two big ones with food outside in the tree house.”
He looked up at Caro, eyes shining with
easy four-year-old happiness.
“One
for me and one for you, and Uncle Jamie says we can have more if we finish it
all up.”
He floated up a moment
and hugged Elsie.
“Maybe you can
be my date next time.
There’s only
room for two people in the tree house unless they’re little like me.”
Elsie tried not to jump as Aervyn and his date vanished.
She pushed away the trickle of jealousy
in her belly.
Aervyn shared his
love widely—that was hardly something to be unhappy about.
She looked around the room, seeking a
friendly face.
There were many.
And they all seemed to be paired up.
Nat and Jamie.
Lizard and the grumpy old man.
Vero, settling Melvin on the couch.
Josh had found Thea and had a wide-eyed Bean settled on his
shoulder.
Irrepressible Helga, her arm tucked in Edric’s elbow.