A Dangerous Witch (Witch Central Series: Book 3) (9 page)

Retha chuckled into her tea.  “I didn’t know if you remembered.  I had fun with that one.”

A mom who had known the heart of her child—even the hidden, tucked-away parts.  “I was very lucky.  Mia is too.”

A smile that held as much mama love as it ever had.  And then dark eyes saddened.  “She didn’t want a new dream.”

Nell felt her worry spiking again.  Dream gifts had to be accepted—no mind witch would ever push, not unless life, limb, or sanity was at stake.  But rainbow-clad fairies and snowmen weren’t usually a hard sell.  Whatever Gramma Retha had sent Mia, it would have been shaped to appeal to the heart it had been aimed at.

Perhaps she just needed to work something through. 
Caffeine had sharpened dark eyes now—and the Sullivan clan matriarch was using it to turn on the deep resilience that had weathered far more than long nights and rejected dreams. 
We’ll just have to apply love in a different form this morning.

Nell smiled, feeling her own everyday courage rising on her mother’s tide. 
Not a problem.
  Today was Saturday.  And waffles.

And they would be wielded by a man who knew the hidden parts of his children’s hearts very well.

-o0o-

Lauren sat at her tiny breakfast table, enjoying the promise of a morning full of waffles and contentment.  It was always dangerous to think Witch Central might go through a calm few hours, but this morning, she could almost believe it.

Maybe it was the musical interlude accompanying her second cup of coffee.  Shay had shown up as Devin was flipping the first pieces of French toast, bearing cinnamon whipped cream and her flute, and had proceeded to serenade the cups of coffee they both required before joining the hordes for waffles.

It was beautiful music.  And haunting.  And several things in between that Lauren hadn’t put too much energy into parsing out just yet.  A girl working out her thoughts in the notes she sent out into the early morning air.

Devin wrapped both hands around his monster mug, eyes mellow.  He had a deep fondness for both Shay and coffee topped with cinnamon whipped cream, so he was a happy man.

And a patient one.  Lauren wasn’t the only one hearing the song behind the notes.  Together, they listened, appreciating the child who had come seeking an audience. 

And then, slowly, seeping in through the coffee haze, came the realization that they didn’t listen alone.

Shay’s notes still slid, shimmering, into the coffee-spiced air—and behind her head, in the bay window overlooking the sea, the orb had begun to dance.  Lovely, wispy tendrils of light, moving in time to the music.

“Whoa,” said Devin softly.

“Yeah.”  Even Fuzzball watched the orb’s show without his usual suspicion.  “Pretty sure Moe’s a fan of whatever Shay’s playing.”

Their musician turned slowly, following the shifted gaze of her audience.  And smiled as she saw the orb’s delicate lights.  A quick trill, and she sped up whatever she was playing, grinning as the light show accelerated in response.  Carefully, she moved her song around, watching as the lights followed.

It was beautiful—ethereal and somehow deeply personal.  A marble, dancing as if no one was watching. 

But it was the emotion emanating from Moe that moved Lauren most deeply.  She’d grown used to the orb’s moods, but this one was entirely different.  No haughty disdain or cranky discomfort, no tinges of an entity deeply unhappy with the lot it had been cast.

Just happiness.  A glass sphere entirely in this moment.

The music had drifted back to gentle and slow again, but with an insistent resonance underneath.  A song, morphing.  Lauren frowned, feeling Moe’s mood shift but not able to read why.  And then she realized it was far easier to read the intent of the musician.

Eleven-year-old eyes watched the orb’s lights now, but not as a spectator.  Notes, played for a purpose.

The crystal ball’s lights dimmed.  Spit and crackled and then turned off entirely.

The musician never wavered.  Out shimmered the notes again, the lilt of invitation blending with that quiet, baseline insistence.

Devin watched, fascinated. 
What’s she doing?

Not sure yet.  Sending a message of some sort.

Shay stepped closer to the clearly resistant orb.  And trilled on a single, beautiful, implacably persistent note.  An order, if Lauren had ever heard one.

Something in Moe breathed out—and the lights began to dance again.  Smaller this time.  And a lot more self-conscious.

But under them, a trickle of shocked conviction.

Lauren directed a mindchannel at the orb, insanely curious.  And then backed out again.  Even cranky orbs deserved privacy.

A shrug.  And then an embarrassed reply to the question not quite asked. 
She says I’m beautiful when I dance.

It was impossible not to smile. 
You are.

Riptides of embarrassment now. 
Dancing isn’t useful.  Tools aren’t meant for such silly things.

And yet, the lights still wove in the air above the crystal ball.

Lauren smiled at her niece’s bright eyes, playing for the joy of a hunk of glass and insisting that Moe’s pleasure had a right to exist in the world. 

Yup.  It was going to be a very good day.

-o0o-

The orb often gazed on the fabric of time.  A meditation, almost.  A way to pass the time when it had eternity to spend and nowhere to go. 

Always, the weaving had fascinated.  Thick threads and ephemeral ones.  Ones no longer than a breath, and ones that stretched far off into the distance.

But never, in all the years of its existence, had the orb been so very certain it gazed on the thread of Mohana Nitya Ratna Mandeep.

It wasn’t a particularly noticeable bit of string.  Certainly not an important one.  But it touched three Moe knew well—the sparkly, simmering trio of threads that could be none other than the triplet girls.

Today, it wasn’t the child of fire who shone brightest.  It was the thread of green, undulating in time to celestial music.  And tucked in just next to it—a humble, slightly awkward filament of yellow.

The orb’s reason protested.  Tools didn’t enter the fabric of time.  They lived outside of temporal realities, serving the forces that wove the cloth.

So Moe had believed since the moment of its birth.

And still.  It could not look away from the little yellow string or the dancing green one at its side.

Today, Shay Walker was making her presence known in the fabric of time.

And somehow, so was her little yellow sidekick.

-o0o-

Nell walked over to the stove and gave her husband a kiss.  “You’ve got quite the crowd this morning.”  Usually the hordes arrived closer to lunchtime.

Daniel, manning four separate waffle irons, grinned.  “Yup.  Apparently they’re all here to check on Mia.”

Nell snorted.  Her husband made his famous waffles every Saturday morning, without fail.  And the denizens of Witch Central flocked to good food with the precision of lemmings and the appetite of small hippos.  “Any chance I can get one before sundown?”

Retha came by and snagged a waffle for the plate in her hand.  “Probably not.  Aervyn wants another one.”

Daniel raised an eyebrow.  “I’ve been feeding that kid waffles since 6 a.m.”

Experienced eyes digested that information.  Aervyn had taken the brunt of draining Mia’s power out at Ocean’s Reach.  Retha pitched her voice low.  “Govin’s had three.”

Nell frowned.  Her old college roommate was a careful and steady witch.  And not normally one who stuffed his face full of cookies or waffles.  “It was a lot of power.”  But not enough to be creating a prolonged run on food this long after the event.

Butterfly wings.  The kind of amorphous threat that made a warrior mama want to growl.

The woman who had lived through the raising of four witches shrugged her shoulders. 
We watch.  And we eat waffles.  And we try not to worry.

That was excellent advice.  And not easy to live by, especially when the eyes of the man cooking waffles had gone dark and thoughtful.  Daniel was one of the world’s best hackers—he didn’t latch on to worrisome information lightly.

“We have one witch who’s not eating.”  It was Jamie joining the stove gathering now, bearing an empty plate and more tightly channeled concern.  “And unless my puny mind magic is misfiring, she’s growing a temper tantrum.”

Oh, hell.  Those weren’t fun in kids of any kind, but baby fire witches and tempers were a bad mix.

Nell turned around just in time to catch her daughter’s voice rising in a shrill whine.

A surprised Helga sat beside Mia, fork frozen an inch above a mountain of whipped cream.

“Everyone thinks I did good yesterday, but it’s not true.”  Mia stared down at her uneaten waffle, the picture of pure misery.  “It was Govin’s magic. I just moved his hands a little.  There are people sitting in the hall outside our room every night, and I can’t even light a stupid candle.”  Her eyes spit fire.  “Or knit.”

Nell met Jamie’s eyes as they both shifted toward the table as unobtrusively as possible.  Mia had pulled enough power yesterday to light a candle for everyone in Berkeley.  All without seeing it.

Jamie shrugged. 
She’ll see it soon enough.  In the meantime, we get to rehearse fast training circles. 
He was practicing what he preached—two layers were in place already.

“Can I have the maple syrup, dear?”  Helga did an admirable job of ignoring the temper tantrum, the witches moving in, and the fact that her waffle was already swimming in syrup. 

Nell moved up to her shoulder.  Nothing scared their crazy resident octogenarian, but Helga knew this wasn’t her battle to fight.

Not yours, either.
  Jamie grinned at his sister. 
Ginia’s on it.

Nell watched the whispered message passing from one blonde head to another—and Mia’s instant grin.  Uh, oh.

Yup.
 Jamie was already standing down his training circle.  One baby fire witch, neatly disarmed. 
She’s about to get revenge for your jewel poaching.

 Nell rolled her eyes.  Y
ou told the dragons how to find her stash.  I had nothing to do with it.
  Realm, however, was waiting with baited breath for Warrior Girl’s response.

No one doubted there would be one.  And Warrior Girl had apparently decided that if it would amuse her sister, now was a very good time.

Antics.  Sullivan-Walker crisis management 101. 

Nell smiled as Ginia leaned over to Moira next, and stuck a fork in her own waffle.  The Wizard needed fortifying before going off to make sure her own jewels were well and truly buried.

-o0o-

Lauren grinned.  It was a weird morning when you could go from flute music to waffle coma to tracking down miscreants in an imaginary world.  She looked over at Moira, resplendent in her favorite Realm get-up, walking up the path beside her into what looked like primeval forest.  “How come the two of us got enlisted for this mission?” 

Ginia giggled from two steps ahead of them.  “Because Aunt Moira’s really devious and sneaky, and you can hear if there are any troublemakers lurking around.”  She raised her voice a little higher.  “Like ones named Mama or Uncle Jamie.”

Mia, far sunnier than she’d been over waffles, picked up a rock and threw it at a bush barely big enough to hide a guinea pig.  “Or Kevin.  He’s smart, and he’s almost as sneaky as Aunt Moira.”

Apparently an old Irish granny had a bit of a gaming reputation.  Lauren accepted her sidekick status and prepared to enjoy a walk through a virtual forest.  And then a flash of color caught her eye.  She peered down at something on the ground that looked like a lost billiard ball.  “What’s this?”  If they were supposed to be detecting magical intrusions into Ginia’s territory, a shiny purple ball in the grass looked pretty suspicious.

Mia’s eyes danced with glee.  “Go ahead.  Pick it up.”

Moira snorted and pulled something yellow and gloopy out of her backpack and laid it beside the purple sphere.  “No picking on players who only spend ten minutes a month in Realm, dears.”

Busted.  Lauren leaned over, curiosity getting the better of her.  “What is it?”

“Dragon bait.”  Ginia grinned.  “It’s full of every kind of spicy herb.  They love it.  It helps them make bigger dragon fire.”

Only in Realm could that possibly sound like a good idea.  “Wait—aren’t we trying to
hide
your jewels from the dragons?” 

“Yup.”  This time Ginia’s grin was dangerous.  “This isn’t near my cache—it’s The Wizard’s.”

“Mama should know better than to help Uncle Jamie with any of his dumb ideas.”  Mia reached into the bag on her sister’s back and started pulling out more dragon-ball bait.  “These ones must be an extra good batch, they’re making my hands tingle.”

“Really?”  Ginia was busy doing something mysterious with a thing in her hands that looked like a steampunk spider.  “Must be the Vietnamese cinnamon bark—I totally juiced it.”

“Carefully, I hope,” said Moira, smiling at the girls as she planted more of her yellow gloop.

Lauren reminded herself never to mess with these particular denizens of Witch Central.  She reached for two of the purple spheres in Mia’s hands.  “I’ll help—where are we supposed to be putting them?”

“Anywhere.”  Mia’s voice was distant, her attention focused on the palm Lauren had just emptied.  “It still tingles.”  She looked up, eyes worried.  “Ginia, is it supposed to do that?”

Her sister turned around—and dropped the spellcubes in her hands, eyes wide with fear.  “Lauren, get Mama.  Right now.”

Lauren threw a mind yell at Nell—and then realized she was in Realm.  Mind magic only worked on people in-game.

“It’s getting stronger.”  Mia’s head hammered with panic, and the temperature in their little corner of Realm had spiked a good ten degrees.

“I got it.”  Ginia yanked out her game tablet and smashed her hand down on a huge red button.  “Full admin alert—everybody will come.”