Witches Under Way (30 page)

She didn’t have a lot more.  Clearly bonfires weren’t as easy as they looked.  This time, Elsie focused, remembering all her fire training.  The second attempt was better—there were actually a few flames before everything fizzled out again.

Her heart pelted against her ribs in frustration.  How could you rage against the world when you couldn’t even get a fire started?  Channeling the need clawing inside her, she aimed one more time.

~ ~ ~

Jennie felt determination from Caro—and then a thunderbolt of power blew past her cheek and Elsie’s bonfire whooshed into flame.

Lauren, coming in the back gate, dove for cover.  Moments later, she climbed out from behind the rose bush, cursing. 
A little warning on the lightning bolts next time, maybe?

Thought I’d give them a hand. 
Caro settled back down on the back porch swing. 
Girl’s not much of a fire witch, but she’s got a big heart.  Deserves a bonfire.

Jennie glanced over at Jamie, who sat cuddling a now-smiling Nat.  “Caro’s not the only witch helping out.  Nice assist on the music volume.  You put a training circle up?”

He snorted.  “A feisty fire witch wants to burn things—what do you think?”

She thought this night was about to get pretty riotous, even by Witch Central’s very permissive standards.  Oddly enough, her pendant had been really silent—they were all here thanks to a text message from Caro.  The get-off-your-butt-and-get-over-here kind.

“What are they burning?”  Lauren squinted in the direction of the back yard.

Jamie grinned when she stabbed his direction with a thorn she’d just plucked out of her shirt.  “Clothes.” 

“Ah.”  Lauren nodded in satisfaction, clearly having mindscanned.  “The stick-butt-Elsie wardrobe.  Nice.”

“Things that don’t fit anymore,” said Nat softly, eyes bright with pleasure and reflected firelight.

“Could have just given them to charity.”  Caro pulled out her knitting.  “That fire’s going to make a real mess of my back yard.”

Jennie was well aware that anyone trying to put out the bonfire would have to get through Caro first.  If anybody understood the ability of fire to burn away the unneeded parts, it was their knitting witch.  “I’m sure we can find you a volunteer cleaning crew.”

“Nuh, uh.”  Jamie grinned and competently mimicked his four-year-old nephew.  “Witches who play with fire have to clean up their own mess.”

Caro snorted, obviously recognizing one of her favorite training mantras.  “Let the girls have their fun first.”  She looked over at the fence line again.  “Seems like they’re getting into the spirit of things.”

Jennie looked—and felt her heart catch.  Her two students, heaping clothing onto the flames.  Elsie singing at the top of her lungs, a look of wild glee on her face.  Lizard was scowling, but lines of fiery poetry stormed in her mind—and she was stoking her roommate’s precarious bravery.

The girl’s got a light touch.
  Caro nodded in approval.
 I didn’t know she could project.
  Reading emotions was fairly easy for most mind witches.  Modulating them in others was tricky—and fraught with ethical issues. 

Neither did I,
said Lauren, pride written all over her face. 
She’s had plenty of opportunity, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen her try.

Jennie was feeling some of that pride herself.  “One thing that’s never been in doubt is Lizard’s ethics.”  And stoking the bravery of a fire witch on the rampage, even a weak one, took some serious chutzpah.

Jamie sat drinking a beer he’d ported from Caro’s fridge.  “So what brought this on?  What got into Elsie?”

Singing lessons, thought Jennie dryly.  She needed to have a little chat with Vero.  And it wasn’t just Elsie.  Lizard might not have started the bonfire, but her mind was churning as it watched the flames.  Something was moving in their delinquent fairy too.  “She wouldn’t have gotten it done without her roommate, though.  They’re feeding off each other over there.”

“Of course they are,” said Nat softly.  “They love.”

~ ~ ~

––––––––––––––

To:
[email protected]

From: Jennie Adams <
[email protected]
>

Subject: Re: Watch for the tempest.

––––––––––––––

Dear Vero,

Oh, the tempest has arrived.  Or rather, the bonfire.  You would have been very impressed with the twenty-foot flames doing away with all the outward trappings of the Elsie who first came to us.  Suits, shoes, even a very ugly black briefcase.

And I should perhaps be embarrassed, but I cheered mightily when notebooks and file folders hit the flames too. 

All done with the glorious vocals of Veronica Liantro streaming into the night.  You literally sang the oxygen into Elsie’s fire.  A luminous performance.

It was Elsie’s bravery shining in the firelight tonight—but she didn’t do it alone.  One blonde fairy stood at her shoulder.  It was Lizard who brought the music outside.  Lizard who gently nudged the mental embers of Elsie’s bravery.  And Lizard who gave us all a bad case of the giggles when she made Elsie go dig up the contents of her underwear drawer too.  Ah, bra burning.  That does bring back memories :-).

I personally think the bras were an excuse.  Something else white slid into the fire along with them, and I’d lay money it was the bandana Lizard wore the day she arrived.

Elsie wasn’t the only witch shedding old skin tonight, even if Lizard did it much more quietly.  We await the morning with interest.

Much love,

Jennie

Chapter 21

Lizard sat down at her kitchen table and tried not to feel like she’d left her kidney with a stranger.  Handing in her poetry journal had nearly killed her.  Not handing it in and facing Freddie’s dark eyes would have been worse.

And a tiny voice in the back of her head kept insisting that’s why she’d written
Freddie’s Bus
in the first place.  Because she wanted the world to know she was a poet, and his belief in her was the only damn thing on the planet that could have forced her to go public.

Yeah.  Lizard Monroe, poet laureate.  That seemed likely.

And man, her head hurt.  Sometime last night, possibly before the bra burning and her crazy decision to actually hand in her journal, they’d consumed some very bad wine.  Or maybe some good wine that tasted bad thanks to the mind magic—she’d never been good at using power while drinking.

Not that she’d been convinced a backyard bonfire was the smartest idea of all time, but it was one of those things you pretty much had to finish once you’d started.  Kind of like handing in poetry journals.  Halfway didn’t count.

“Morning.”  Josh walked into the kitchen holding out a box.  “Don’t shoot—I brought donuts.”

What, was there a sign on their front door saying “Come on in, we don’t mind?”  Lizard started to scowl, and then remembered that was a totally ineffective tactic on this particular annoyance in her life.  Instead, she pasted a grin on her face and grabbed the box.  “How totally lovely.  There are going to be ten half-naked women here soon, and I’m sure they’ll be thrilled the donut shop delivered.  Thanks, goodbye, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Josh gaped.  Then he grinned.  And then he busted up laughing.  All without actually letting go of the box of donuts.

Dammit, she was not playing tug-o-war over baked goods.  Lizard let go of the box and stomped to the window.  “Why are you here—did you lose your keys or something?”

“Nope.”  He opened the donut box on the counter and took out something that made her traitorous stomach growl.  “I wanted to talk to you about an investor meeting.”

“A what?”  Lizard grabbed a cruller.  Any sentence with “meeting” in it definitely deserved a donut.

“For the neighborhood-mapping project.”  Josh reached for a napkin.  “I’ve got some investors interested in talking to you.”

Okay, her head was going to officially explode.  “Why do they want to talk to me—can’t you just show them the demo?”

He paused, hand stuck in the donut box.  “We talked about this when you came to the office.  People don’t just hand over a few hundred thousand dollars because they saw a prototype.  They want to see who’s behind the idea.”

Her brain had stopped dead at “a few hundred thousand dollars.” 

Josh was back on his donut-seeking mission.  “You’re the creator, and you have great vision for where the project should go.  Sit, talk with these guys for a bit, and you’ll be funded.”  He grinned.  “Then you hire us to execute.”

Yup.  Still stuck.  Lizard blinked and tried to unglue her fried circuits.  “What the frack do you need hundreds of thousands of dollars for?”

“More than that.  About three million, I figure.”  He reached into his bag and pulled out a computer.  “Here are some estimated start-up costs, sales projections, stuff like that.  We’re good at that part, but you’re the ideas girl, so they’re going to want to talk to you.”

She’d never realized eyes could actually bug out of your head.  “It’s just freaking maps.  That I do on a computer in my spare time with free tools anyone with an Internet connection and a brain can use.”  The numbers in the spreadsheet were mesmerizing, in a totally sick way.  “Where do you find stupid suits who want to pay you lots of money for something anyone can do for free?”

Josh rolled his eyes and slammed the donut lid shut.  “Okay.  Then I’ll let you make your own donuts and take these away with me.”

“What?”

“You buy donuts.  You buy bacon and eggs at the diner.  Why?  You could make them a lot cheaper here in your kitchen.”

He was so not a cook.  “It takes hours to make donuts.”

“Exactly.”  He grinned, clearly headed somewhere she wasn’t going to like.  “How long does it take to make one of your maps?”

A freaking long time.  And now the numbers on his spreadsheet were starting to mess with her head.  “So people pay for fast and easy.”

“Every day.”  He suddenly looked a lot more like one of those suit people.  “Realtors are busy people, and selling a house brings in a big commission.  You think they’re going to balk at a few dollars for a tool that will make their job easier?”

Not the smart ones.  Lizard squinted at the numbers, taking them more seriously now.  “You’re pricing this as a subscription service?  Not a per-use thing?”

“That’s just a preliminary model.  Those are the kinds of decisions you’ll need to work with us to make.”

“Me?”  Okay, brain glue gone.  “I can’t do this.  I’m just the ideas girl, remember?”  She waved at the computer.  “Pay me for my idea, and then
you
can figure all this stuff out.”

“Could.”  Josh grabbed what must be his fifteenth donut.  “And if you were stupid, you might go along with it.”  He plowed right over her growl.  “We’d offer you about half a mil up front, all rights.”

Brain glue back.  In triplicate.

“If you’re smart, you invest that capital back with us as lead partner in the project and walk away with ten times that in a couple of years.”  He shrugged.  “Up to you.”

Five million dollars.  In two years.  For some maps.  No way.  No fracking way.

Josh closed the donut box.  “Lemme know.  Jennie’s got a couple of people she thought might want to play too.  I can set up the meeting anytime you’re ready.”

The bottom fell out of Lizard’s world.  “What does Jennie have to do with this?”  And how did Josh even know Jennie?  This had smelled, right from the beginning.  Now it stunk right to Witch Central heaven.

Josh’s eyebrows winged up at her tone.  “Not much.  We don’t need her at all if you don’t want, but I tend to try to meet potential investors before I tell them to take a hike.”

Brain glue was no match for the wrath of Lizard.  She stood.  She steamed.  And then she mounted her charge.  Even Josh was smart enough to get out of her way.  She’d deal with him later—right now, she had a witch to go eviscerate.  Nobody got to screw around with her like this.

~ ~ ~

Jennie could hear Lizard coming from halfway down the block.  Furious mind witches made a lot of noise—and this one was making no effort to be quiet.

Something about donuts and people in suits.

Furious mind witches also didn’t tend to make a lot of sense.

Jennie tossed the laundry basket on the bed and headed for the door.  At least it was a good excuse to get out of folding towels.  She slid into a pair of flip-flops, and following instinct, grabbed her camera.  She figured a smart witch went into battle well armed, and her lens had always been her best weapon.

She got to the front door seconds ahead of her fuming student and opened it wide.  Lizard stormed in, wearing a tank top and smiley-face boxer shorts, half a donut still clutched in her hand.  Jennie’s fingers itched mightily, but she was pretty sure that would get a camera shoved up her nose.

Well, they could always try small talk.  “Good morning.”

“Like hell.”  Lizard whirled, squished clumps of donut plopping onto the floor.  “What were you thinking?  Let the rich people offer to buy Lizard’s soul?  And how the frack do you even know Josh in the first place?”