.5 To Have and To Code (18 page)

Ego-free generosity.  Witch Central was drenched in it—and she’d still almost blown her part.  The next batter up had hit the ball straight into Daniel’s glove, and the fourteen-year-old girl, loose on the rules of baseball, had run anyhow, beelining for second base and Nell’s waiting tag.

In the quiet comfort of her own living room, she could admit that the throw smacking into her glove from first base had been a dare. 

She’d carefully missed the tag.  Barely.  And when the next batter up had sent one deep into the outfield, launched the quivering, excited teenager toward third with a mind-hissed “RUN!”

When the girl slid into home in a squealing cloud of dirt, straight into Truck’s chest and safe by an inch, even the pint-sized fans cheered.  And Daniel had slid his temporary second baseman a look that spoke of amusement, belonging, and respect.

It had fanned more than one kind of flame inside her.

Nell traced the crooked, random lines on the patchwork pillow her mother had painstakingly pieced together.  An act of true sacrifice—Retha Sullivan had little affection for most of the domestic arts.  But she knew of love and home, and so she’d made the pillow as a housewarming gift.  It had bits and pieces of all the fabrics of Nell’s childhood.  The yellow dress she’d been wearing when her power first flared, awestruck fingers shooting sparks of fireworks at the sky.  She’d been three, and she’d been enchanted.  The red overalls she’d worn to school every Monday of first grade.  They’d made her feel brave, and Mom had washed them every Sunday night.  The flaming orange skirt Caro had sewn for her, complete with shorts underneath.  Just right for a girl who liked to climb trees.

Small acts of love from people who’d understood the girl she’d been and the woman she’d become.

Tonight, Daniel had bestowed the same kind of gift on one awkward fourteen-year-old girl.

And two small, meddling cheerleaders in the stands.

And the fiery, confused woman standing on second base.

Nell hugged the pillow tighter.  And wondered what to do with a man who handed out those kinds of gifts.

Chapter 12

She’d threatened, cajoled, and bribed Jamie to ensure his presence back in The Dungeon.  And the moment he walked in and took a seat at his desk, Nell wished he’d just quietly disappear.

The smirk on her brother’s face suggested she’d been thinking far too loudly. 
That can be arranged, sister mine.  Just give me the secret signal, and I’ll retreat.  Got an engine that needs rebuilding.

Jamie broke motorcycles almost as fast as he built them. 
We have work to do.  Pretty sure yours requires actually having your butt in front of a computer.

Aye, aye, sir.

Nell rolled her eyes and ignored his mental send of Captain Bligh, complete with comic-book boobs.  She could blow an entire morning teaching him some respect, and they really did have work to do.  Realm was reporting a flurry of unmanned tornadoes.

She turned as Daniel appeared at the bottom of the stairs, hoping today was the day she found the magic sauce that would keep her hormones level.  Given the buzz skittering over her skin, probably not.  “Want to help out with the morning crisis list?”

He grinned.  “Do I need one keyboard or two?”

“It’s your brain we could use, not your mobile fingers.”  A sentiment the dancing embers in her gut vehemently disagreed with.

Dammit, she was
not
thinking about his fingers.  They had tornadoes to de-power.  “We’ve got some ugly weather running around in Realm, and it’s breeding like rabbits.”  She scanned the emergency list.  “Jamie, you want to clear out the southern kingdom?  Looks like we’ve got a dragon who doesn’t like being pelted with uprooted trees.”  Her brother was very good at sweet-talking dragons. 

“On it.”

She glanced at Daniel and debated which task to assign him.  He’d been awfully quiet about his magic so far, and disarming tornados required decent air power.  Maybe best to leave him coding, where she knew his skills were hot.  “I’ll handle the northern kingdom.  How about you go find the spell that caused everything to go haywire in the first place?”

“Any idea what it was?”  His fingers were already flying over the keys.

Dammit, typing was not sexy.  Nell sped through her inbox, trying to ignore the way he changed the air she breathed.  She scanned subject lines—usually the culprits confessed as soon as they knew they’d loosed out-of-control code.  “Yeah.  Looks like someone rigged a tropical storm and forgot to set a failsafe.”  It was amazing what basic rules of magic witches forgot in the heat of online battle.  Any idiot who did that in real life would be one sizzled witch.

“Some spell controls would prevent that kind of mess,” said Daniel, reaching for a donut.

“Sure.”  Jamie teleported a honey glazed, one hand still working the keyboard.  “But it would also slow down game innovation.  The players who cause the biggest messes are also some of our most creative spellcoders.”

“That’s a good hook, mixing coding and magic like that.  You guys should market that better.” 

Nell shook her head and sent a quick de-twist spell down her mouse.  One tornado down, three to go.  “You want to play with the marketing geeks, head downtown.”

Their newest hire just snorted.

“Not much point in marketing anyhow.”  Her brother shrugged absently and threw a magical blanket over the last forest fire in the southern kingdom.  “Who’s left to tell?  Most witches already know about us.”

Daniel looked puzzled for a moment, and then squinted at his screen, distracted.  “Found it.  Some guy with the screen name Gandalf.  No, wait.  Someone borrowed his storm spell and spliced in some code.” 

Darn.  Nell would have enjoyed giving one Marcus Buchanan grief about sloppy spellwork.

“Weird.”  Their resident hacker scowled at his monitor.  “More of those dead variable calls.  That’s where all the trouble happened—someone spliced into one of them.  Split the tags.  How come you guys don’t screen for that?”

Nell frowned—it sounded like geek speak, but she wasn’t following him at all.  Rolling over to Daniel’s desk, she peered over his shoulder.  “Come again?”

“Here, here, and here.”  Daniel highlighted lines of code on-screen.  “Same thing, over and over.  Variable calls where nothing happens.  This one down here is where the problem happened.”

Nell looked where he pointed, confused.  “Sure.  That’s where the spellcoding activates.”  It was where magic hooked in to the code, and a logical place for things to go wrong.

“But it dead-ends.”  Daniel threw the spell into his own profile and tried to activate.  “Nothing, see?  Goes nowhere.”

What was this, Monday-morning amnesia?  Nell rolled her eyes.  “Try using a little magic there, Mr. Hacker Coding Genius Dude.” 

She waited for him to pull power.

Read the total confusion on his face.

And then heard her brother’s quiet voice in the back of her head.
 I don’t think he can.

The atoms of Nell’s world exploded and rearranged upside-down. 
What?

He hasn’t pulled power the whole time he’s been working here.  He doesn’t recognize a spellcode variable call. 
Jamie’s eyes were busy, scanning his screen. 
And all the spells in his profile are pure code.

She didn’t bother to question—on this kind of stuff, Jamie’s word was gold.  And the implication of his words had emptied her lungs of air.

Daniel Walker had breached the walls of Realm.  Entered the witch-only levels.  Held her fearsome magic to a draw in hand-to-hand combat.

And he
wasn’t a witch
.

Her brain skittered in a thousand directions, trying to find firm ground.  Just like she’d done the first time they’d met, she yanked on fire power. Energy seared her skin, magical ozone ready to fly.  Nell coated herself in a blazing layer of it, shaped it into a cone of leashed lightning, and aimed.

Not even the tiniest mental flinch.  Which took balls of steel—or he really wasn’t a witch.

Holy hell.

Dark eyes watched her, confused, and demanding answers.

She didn’t have them. 

How could he not be a witch? 

The shredded bits of a once-normal morning clawed at her throat.  She needed air, and space, and freedom from brown eyes that saw so much—and understood so little.  So Nell Sullivan did the only thing she could do, faced with the impossible.

She fled.

-o0o-

Daniel gripped the keyboard in his lap, trying to cling to anything real.  He stared blankly at the mysterious lines of code, and then looked back up at the staircase where a suddenly stricken Nell had vanished.

And felt like he’d fallen into the fifth dimension.  One where code didn’t obey the laws of computing and sane people went crazy before his very eyes.

She’d been afraid.  In the silent, tearing moment before she’d run, Nell’s eyes had held fear.

He needed answers.  And since the lead-off batter had vanished, there was only one place to get them.  Daniel swung his chair around and pinned Jamie with the look he’d always used to pin footloose runners to second base.  “What the hell’s going on?”

To his credit, Jamie only blinked.  “I’m not sure, honestly.”

That wasn’t even close to an answer.  As a hacker, he was well aware code held secrets—but not this kind of secret.  Not a kind he didn’t understand.  “Care to explain these dead variables?”  It wasn’t a request.  He’d blipped through a wormhole and landed in quicksand—and the guy sitting in the chair holding half a honey-glazed donut knew the way out.

Jamie met his gaze, The Dungeon silent for a long, long moment.  “Ask Nell.”

He would.  Right after he found oxygen again.  A good hacker knew how to get
in
to difficult places.  A great one knew when to get the hell
out
.

He didn’t run for the back exit—but it was a close thing.  A manly and very brisk walk.  Time to find solid ground.

And get ready for round two.

-o0o-

Nell pelted up the stairs—straight into the solid chest of the woman waiting at the top.    She resisted the warmth, the invitation, and the demand in her mother’s eyes.  “Let me go.”

Retha stepped back, hands in the air, mind seeking.  Asking.  Offering the kind of empathy that usually turned her children to Jell-O.

Eventually.

Nell yanked down her mental barriers.  “Stay out of my head.”  She winced as soon as the words came out, well aware she’d been broadcasting shock loud enough for half of Berkeley to hear.

“Come.”  The hand on her arm was firm—but still asked. 

And as she done so many times in twenty-seven years, Nell wrapped herself in that comfortable, persistent love and brought her problems to the kitchen table.

She took a seat—and hoped the table could hold up.  This was bigger than skinned knees and failed magic tricks.  “Daniel’s not a witch.”

Shock flared in her mother’s eyes.  “How is that possible?”

That was one of several dozen questions ricocheting through Nell’s brain.  “I don’t know.  But Jamie was sure.”  She took a deep breath, sorting through the details pelting her head and settling on the one that had her gut most convinced.  “I pulled power and he didn’t react.  At all.”

They’d all inherited their poker face from the woman sitting across the table.  “Exactly how much power did you draw?”

“Enough.”  Nell listened to her breath shaking and hated it.  Opted for a grin instead.  “I aimed a lightning bolt at his waist.”  A move guaranteed to have any of her brothers running for cover.

Amusement flittered across Retha’s face.  “Daniel doesn’t strike me as an idiot.”

No, he didn’t—quite the opposite.  “He must have insane coding skills.”  Hers were some of the best in the business, and he’d breached them more than once.

Without magic.

Daniel Walker wasn’t a witch.

He’d hacked into her turf and deflected lightning with nothing more than his bare hands, and he had no idea what he’d done.  He’d faced down magic—her magic!—with nothing more than sublime skill with a keyboard.

Daniel Walker
wasn’t a witch.

Hands reached across the table to hold hers.  “That’s only half the problem, sweetheart.”  Retha’s voice overflowed with sympathy.

Nell hitched another breath and tried to fathom what awfulness could possibly be the other half.  And blanched when it hit her.  “He doesn’t know
I’m
a witch.”

The aching understanding in her mother’s eyes nearly undid her for a second time.

Daniel had stormed more than Realm.  He’d sent her hormones racing to the moon and back.  And she was beginning to like him.  Really like him—a messy combination of respect and intrigue that was tugging on her hard.

He danced with a witch—and had no idea.

“You have to tell him.”

She knew.  And she hated it.  “Why?  Because he has a right to know?”  Her world was shaking in its boots—she didn’t much care about Daniel Sullivan’s rights.

“Yes,” said Retha, her moral compass as solid as always, even in the difficult world of witch ethics.  “And because you have a right to be known as the woman you are.”