Witches Under Way (28 page)

And found love. 

It had been love misguided—but it still mattered.  And it quenched her need to rage against the woman who hadn’t been the mother she needed. 

Elsie Bean’s past was already written—no amount of fire and fury could change it.  But the future was entirely up to her. 

To start, she could offer Mom a chance to get to know the woman she intended to be. Elsie smiled and held out a hand.  “Come meet my new bike.  Her name is Gertrude Geronimo, and she sparkles.”

It was worth the entire trip just to see the melting shock on her mother’s face.  Elsie grinned.  She might have to accept the past, but there was no need to make the future entirely easy.  Time for Mom to meet her new daughter—the one with fire in her soul and ribbons on her bike.

~ ~ ~

Hand clutching her pendant, Nat strode swiftly down a street she didn’t know, in a neighborhood she’d never been to before.  Seeking… something.

After a session of moonlit yoga in the wee hours of the morning, delightfully interrupted by her husband, she’d been indulging in a morning of lazy sleep.  And then her pendant had gone nuts, a frantic beacon that had yanked her out of bed and into the car, trying to follow the mangled directions of a rock that clearly didn’t understand motorized vehicles couldn’t fly.

She was close now.  And whatever curses she might want to rain on her hapless pendant, it had gotten her close.  That much she could tell.

She didn’t often wish for magic, but mind powers would have been really useful right about now.

And then her pendant exhaled, its sense of impending crisis fading away on the release of breath.  Cripes.  She had a bad case of yoga brain.  Rocks didn’t breathe—but the urgent beat in her palm was almost gone.

Nat paused a moment, trying to get a better read.  Her pendant still thrummed.  All right.  Time to find Elsie and whatever in this neighborhood of cookie-cutter suburbia was chasing her.  But she probably didn’t need to call in cops, witches, or the Sullivan family SWAT team. 

She began to move again and then crashed to a halt as realization hit.  Add a few million dollars, and this was exactly the kind of proper sameness her own parents lived in.  Elsie had gone to see her mother.

Now Nat didn’t need the pendant’s pounding alert to feel sick to her stomach.  She remembered all too well the day she’d gone to confront the demons of her childhood—and left with machine-gun holes in her soul.

Beautiful yellow dresses and siren-red shoes didn’t protect against bullets.

Nat’s eyes ranged more desperately now, cursing her pedant’s ill-timed quiet.  Then a flash of color caught her eye and gladdened her astonished heart.  Elsie, flying down a distant street on Gertrude Geronimo.  Smiling.

Then Nat’s heart beat harder—and she somehow knew that the smiles came through tears.  She stepped into the street, waving, fingers of her other hand still wrapped around her pendant.  Whatever magic was hers to use, she willed it to catch Elsie’s attention. 

When Gertrude turned and headed in her direction, she breathed a deep sigh of gratitude.

“I didn’t expect you here.”  The bicycle wobbled as Elsie jerked to a halt, face streaming with tears—and oddly happy.  “Sorry—I’m a bit of a mess, I think.”

Nat reached out a hand, gently wiping tears.  “My pendant paged me.  It seemed to think you might want some company.”

Elsie tilted her head and swiped at her face.  “Maybe I do.”  She swung off her bike and began pushing on Gertrude’s handlebars.  “Do you mind if we walk?  I think I need to get out of here.”  She looked around, shuddering.  “It’s all the same.  Why did I never realize that growing up?”

Nat smiled, hearing the wobbles—and sure now that there were no life-threatening bullet holes.  “No Gertrudes here.  That’s a supremely cool frog, by the way.”

Elsie grinned, still sniffling.  “It was ugly and brown when I found it.  Aervyn helped me turn it the right color.”

The mental image of a four-year-old and the once-proper Elsie pouring lime-green love into a mud-colored plastic frog was one Nat tucked away to treasure.  Sometimes transformation came in the most unexpected ways.

Elsie patted her frog’s head, giggling at the squeaky belch.  “I think the frog was the last straw for my mom.”    She ran a hand gently down Gertrude’s pink and sparkly stem.  “I came to blast her, Nat.  To hit her with all the pain of living this many years believing I was the child she wanted me to be.”

Nat’s heart ached.  “I know.  I made that same journey once.”

Elsie’s eyes widened.  “I mostly didn’t do it.  I couldn’t.  She was wrong in so many ways, and for so many reasons.  But she loves me.”  She exhaled in a sharp blast.  “So I showed her Gertrude instead.  And invited her to come visit me sometime.”  Her eyes twinkled.  “The Arts District will totally freak her out.  Lizard will, too.”

From anger to forgiveness to active reaching.  In one morning.

It was a breathtaking journey.  Nat reached for the handlebars, stopping Gertrude, and hoped Elsie could read the immense respect in her eyes.  “It has taken me fifteen years, Elsie.  Fifteen years, and I haven’t traveled as far with my mother as you did this morning.”

Emotion flooded Elsie’s eyes.  Shock.  Pride.  And then finally pain—and an ocean of empathy.  She reached for Nat’s hands, fingers whisper gentle.  Her voice, however, was edged in steel.  “Then she must not love you enough to make the trip worth it.”

Nat felt the great, gaping slice in her soul as the last dark roots of hate and fear were lopped off by Elsie’s sharp, bright words.  The lacking, the reason why she couldn’t reach her mother—didn’t live in her.

She clung to her student’s shoulders, racked with great, gulping sobs.  Sometimes truth was the most brutal weapon of all.  And the greatest gift. 

Now she knew why her pendant had rung.  It had rung for her.

~ ~ ~

She would be an uber-professional realtor if it killed her.  She’d even worn a damned suit.  Lizard squirmed, ready to hate Josh just for that.  Why people with lots of money chose to wear the most stupidly uncomfortable clothes on the planet was a complete mystery.

Then she spied Josh coming down the street.  In jeans with holes in the knees.  Fine—maybe not all rich people were totally stupid.

Then again, he was buying a house with a big kitchen and he couldn’t cook.  That was a point in the pretty-dumb column.  She had some nice single-boy condo listings with a microwave and takeout menus tattooed on the wall.

Her pendant vibrated in warning.  It seemed to like Josh.

Yup.  It was going to be an entirely craptastic day.  She pasted a cheery smile on her face and went to greet her client.  “Good morning.  Ready to be a homeowner?”  Cripes, that sounded like something from the worst of the realtor-training videos.

Josh, however, just grinned.  “I am.  I think my hotel room’s giving me hives.”

Ha.  He never spent any time there.  The neighbors had been feeding him all week—she had her sources.  “When are you moving in your stuff?”

“Already did.”  He waved in the general direction of the front porch, where a couple of duffle bags, three boxes, and a really ugly chair were sitting.  “I didn’t have much.”

That was an understatement.  “You sleep on the floor?”

“Not usually.”  He grinned, and headed up the walkway.  “I’m going shopping after I dance around the living room a couple of times.  Want to come?”

No.  The professional-realtor thing drew a firm line at having anything to do with the client after they owned the house.  A fruit basket, maybe.  Or a Christmas card.

She squeezed her eyes shut.  Liar, liar, pants on fire.  He had an empty house and an unlimited budget.  It would be the best shopping trip ever.

She was so not going.  He did funny things to her insides, and made her want to believe they lived in a universe where Planet Lizard and Planet Josh didn’t implode on contact.  He might like her new window dressing—but what lay underneath just didn’t mix with guys like Joshua Hennessey.

He thought she could help him pick out a new TV.  She could tell him several places to pick up a fenced one for cheap.  Different planets.

She got the lockbox pieces off the front door handle—just in time to see her totally hip-and-cool client leap across the threshold with a warrior yell and turn a cartwheel down the hallway.  A really good cartwheel.  Then he ran up the stairs and slid down the banister, practically landing in her lap.  “Sorry.  Damn, that’s fast.  I’ll have to put a crash-pad at the bottom, or something.”  He grinned.  “Wanna try it?”

There were forty-three reasons that was a bad idea.  She went with the obvious one and looked down at her skirt in disgust.  “I don’t think I dressed right.”  Yup.  Suits sucked. 

Josh laughed.  “I guess that rules out cartwheels down the hallway too.”

Nope.  Basic klutziness ruled those out.  Lizard tried to remember the whole realtor thing.  “So you’ve signed all the paperwork, but we should do a quick last inspection.  Make sure they didn’t leave holes in the walls or anything.”

“Holes can be fixed.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “Are you always so grumpy when you do key delivery?”

“No.”  That was usually Lauren’s job.  Or at least one they did together, where Lizard could kind of skulk in the background.  She’d expected the same thing to happen today, until she’d arrived at the office to a pile of paperwork, keys, and a note that said “Good luck.”

Josh grinned.  “I’m special then, huh?  What do I have to do to get you to stop making faces at me?”

Crap.  Scowling was totally not professional.  She tried the realtor-video fake smile again, and then snorted as he pulled his shirt up over his face.

He shook his head as he came back out.  “Quit doing that—it’s totally creepy.”

This so wasn’t going like she’d planned.  “I’ll go so you can move in your boxes.”

He snagged her hand.  “Does that mean you’re not going shopping with me?”

It was a big, fat line in the sand.  And she was a big girl who knew which side she belonged on.  “I can’t.  Got stuff to do.” 

His face didn’t so much as flicker out of casual-guy mode—but his mind was keenly disappointed.  “Maybe one day soon.  I’ll probably be shopping for weeks.”

“Maybe.”  Screw professional.  Lizard muttered something under her breath and got the hell out of the house of the guy she needed to stay really, really far away from.

Chapter 20

Jennie sat in her darkroom, poring over old negatives.  She would never forget the pictures that had made her famous or kept her that way, the professional persona of Jenvieve Adams, world-renowned photographer.  But sometimes it was fun—or oddly disconcerting—to paddle around in the quietly forgotten waters of the other thousands of pictures.

Usually it was a journey that kept her up late at night.  Today she’d come in at high noon, trying to find the patience to wait quietly for her students’ journeys to unfold.

A few reports had drifted in.

Jamie had gotten a text from Nat, who was apparently with Elsie, walking back from some suburb in outer Mongolia.  Jennie grinned as she recalled the dour tone of his text—Jamie wasn’t fond of either the suburbs or missing pregnant wives.

Lizard had gone to deliver keys to Josh—and never come back.  Lauren wanted to put out a witch APB, but for the moment, Jennie had held her off.  Her pendant had stopped its furious pounding.

It felt like the eye of the storm.

Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking.  Time to email Vero.

~ ~ ~

Vero read Jennie’s email and smiled.  No opera singer was afraid of storms.  The greatest of life’s moments were the ones infused with the most passion—and passion wasn’t always easy.

Ah, but it was always grand.

It was why she had loved the stage so much—a chance to sink her soul into a storm of feeling, to fill and drain and fill again, and then to walk away with a lightness of being that only came from visiting the depths of despair, tragedy, and love unrequited.

Much less messy than doing all those things in real life, although she’d given that a fair try in her lifetime as well.

She wondered which of those things was driving Elsie today, and turning Melvin white with the strain of waiting.  In him, passion ran deep and still—but it ran.  Oh, it ran.  So long it had taken her to figure that out, but he loved with a completeness very few hearts could match.

Light footsteps in the hall told her Elsie had arrived.  The swirl of yellow coming through the door pleased Vero greatly—until she saw that the eyes didn’t match the dress.

Oh, dear.  “Hello, my love.  You look glorious today.  Such a dress shouldn’t come with a sad heart.”

“My heart’s been bouncing around quite a bit this morning.  I was hoping if I put on the dress, I’d find the happiness to match it.”

Elsie’s lopsided smile tugged on her heartstrings.  “Tell me about your day, sweetheart, and we’ll see if we can find music to match it.”

“I went to see my mother.”

Six words that nearly stopped Vero’s heart.  And she gave them the only response she could.  Silent respect.

“It wasn’t what I expected,” said Elsie softly.  “I went in all scared and angry fire—and then I remembered that she loves me, and I can live as I choose now, and… well, I left.”  She spun around.  “I felt good when I left.  I thought it would bring me some kind of peace, but now I just feel empty.  Like there’s a hole where the happiness should be.  Like something was stolen.”