An Imperfect Witch (10 page)

Whoa. 
What the hell are you up to?

I’m about to wreak havoc with your free time for the next week.
 Lauren looked at Raven.  “The place needs doing top to bottom, and the owner gave me permission to do the hiring.  Pay’s fifteen dollars an hour, I provide the paint and supplies.  But I need it done by next Saturday.  If you want to camp out here so you can get to work faster in the morning, that’s cool.”

Raven oozed disdain—but her mind had jarred to a halt at “fifteen dollars an hour.”

Lizard wanted to strangle both of them. 
I don’t work for fifteen dollars an hour.
  Anymore.

Lauren looked amused. 
Who said I was paying you?  Owner’s a total cheapskate.

It only got better and better.

They felt Raven’s decision coalescing.  She eyed them both, defiance front and center.  “I want half the money up front.”

“No dice.”  Lauren answered before Lizard had time to send an alarm.  “You do the job, you get paid.  You ditch halfway through, you get nothing.  And if you’re going to do that, tell me now so I can go find myself a painter with some muscles and an extra six inches.”

Lizard stared in awe.  That was eleven kinds of dare, all in three sentences.

Raven fired up right to the point of total annihilation.  And then, staring Lauren straight in the eyes, backed down.  “I’ll get it done.  But I want a flat rate.”

Lauren had the world’s best poker face.  “That’s a possibility.”

“Twelve hundred, and you throw in dinner every night.”

Lizard did some quick math.  Unless Raven planned on painting eighteen hours a day, that was quite the upsell.

Thanks for the math assist,
sent Lauren wryly.  “Nine hundred, and I’ll send over breakfast, too.”

“Done.  And we’ll be finished early.”  Raven tossed a shoulder.  “Assuming the ninety-eight-pound weakling here can actually paint.”

No how.  No way.  Lizard drilled her nose into Raven’s face.  “I’ll be the one in charge, sister.  Six o’clock tomorrow morning.  If you’re still in bed, I’m eating your breakfast.”

Raven only raised an eyebrow.  “Fine.”

Holy hell.  Lizard saved her fury—and her appreciation for Raven’s chutzpah.  She’d probably be choking on both in the morning.  She turned toward the door and blasted her boss. 
What the heck have you gotten me into?

Lauren’s raised eyebrow mirrored Raven’s. 
Pretty sure you started this.

Not on freaking purpose.  Lizard stomped to the door.  She needed a double chai latte, an extra serving of bacon, and about three hours with Josh.  Not necessarily in that order.  Right after she dug up her fancy new sleeping bag and pitched it through the door at Raven.  Probably along with some of the bacon.

Damn.  No way did this end well.

Worry about how it starts. 
A hand settled on her shoulder. 
The place needs a paint job and this client will take anything that’s cheap.  Your friend here gets a legal place to stay for a few days, you get time to come up with a plan, and maybe after that we can actually sell this listing. 
Lauren sounded almost smug.
 Everyone wins.

Maybe in some alternate reality that didn’t involve Lizard Monroe and a paintbrush.  Or the part about coming up with a plan. 
I hate painting. 
Almost as much as she hated planning.

Pretty sure this week isn’t going to change that. 
Lauren opened the front door. 
But it might change her.

Lizard wished, with all her paintbrush-hating heart, that she could disagree.

-o0o-

It wasn’t every day that gun-slinging seniors showed up at your house.  Nell grinned at the new arrivals and ushered them in.  “The girls are in the living room.”  And they’d be seriously pleased to see two of their costumes in action.

She followed Helga and Edric down the hall.  “Did you guys walk over?”

“Yes.”  Edric didn’t look entirely thrilled by his cowboy-clad walk through eight blocks of Berkeley in broad daylight.

Nell tried not to laugh—her neighborhood would have barely blinked, but he lived in a slightly more staid part of town.

“We’re just trying to get people in the Halloween mood,” said Helga primly.  “Some of them need a little help.  And the girls wanted to see our new hats.”  She rounded the corner into the living room.

Nell laughed as squeals broke out in triplicate.

“The woman knows how to make an entrance.”  Edric might have sounded grumpy, but his eyes followed his wife of eight months fondly.

Whatever else he might have said was drowned out as the girls launched their squealing machine at him next.  And whatever the guy claimed, he wasn’t in the least upset by it. 

Helga looked over, eyes full of fond glee.  “It isn’t every man who can carry off a pair of bedazzled holsters.”

The glitter and jewels had perhaps gotten a little out of control.

“The hats are awesome,” pronounced Mia, dashing over for one more kiss of Helga’s cheek.  “I didn’t know cowboy hats came in lime green.”

“They don’t.”  The older woman leaned over and spoke in a stage whisper.  “But Edric managed to remember a small spell from his boyhood.”

“Ooooh.”  Aervyn had bounced into the living room just in time for that pronouncement.  His eyes glued to Edric.  “Would it work for frog pus?”

Uh, oh.  Nell watched the triplets’ eyebrows go up—apparently frog pus hadn’t been on their very detailed event plan.  It might explain why Devin’s hands had been stained strange colors, though.  One generation of Sullivan men, corrupting the next.

Edric studied the witchling gravely.  “Well, that rather depends.”

Aervyn hopped from one foot to the other, not overly patient with magical waffling.  “On what?”

“On whether you’ve remembered to add sodium bicarbonate and a pinch of ascorbate.”

Aervyn’s eyes widened.  “I don’t know.”

“It seems,” said Edric, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder, “that you need an able assistant.  I do believe I’ve made frog pus a time or two.”

Aervyn looked up at the man who had been the source of his middle name, eyes full of hero worship.  “Uncle Devin tried really hard, but we kept getting purple stuff.  And frog pus needs to be green.”

“It surely does, my good friend.”  Edric looked first at Nell, and then at Helga.  And then, eyes twinkling, looked down at the child at his side.  “Perhaps you’d port us to my kitchen, youngling.  I’m pretty sure I have a secret ingredient or two that will help us in our task.”

Nell snorted as the duo vanished—her kitchen had plenty of baking soda.  Edric just knew better than to make an unholy mess there.

Shay shook her head at Helga.  “Your house is going to be a total disaster.”

“Probably.”  The spry cowgirl sat down and patted the couch at her sides.  “But I expect they’ll eventually remember to clean up.  And I wanted a chance to talk with you three.”

A trio of girls leaped for the couch, frog pus forgotten.  Helga never wanted to talk about boring stuff.

She eyed them intently, each in turn.  “I need a favor.  I need you to put together a care package for me.”

“For who?”  Three, asking as one.

Helga shook her head.  “I can’t tell you that, because it’s kind of private right now.  But I spied someone who I think is sad and could use a bit of cheering up.  And I don’t know anyone better at that than the three of you."

Three heads conferred.  Ginia looked up, spokesgirl for the moment.  “Give us ten minutes.”

“Perfect.”  Helga smiled fondly as the girls rushed out of the room.  “They’ve got wonderful big hearts.”

Nell lounged in the corner, entirely in agreement, and contemplated the skillful maneuvering of the woman with purple-jeweled holsters.  “Who’d you see?”

“Josh.”  Helga sighed.  “Sitting in the coffee shop this morning, looking like he’s lost his last friend.”

Nell winced.  That couldn’t possibly be good.  “Anything else we can do?”

“Not yet.”  The older woman tipped up her lime-green hat.  “Young love isn’t always easy, or old love either, for that matter.  But they’re two good hearts.  They’ll find their way.”

If Witch Central wishes could make it so, they certainly would.

And in the meantime, there was always care packages.  Nell got up—she had a couple of contributions to make.

Chapter 9

Showing up with paint had been the easy part.  Lauren hung out in the deeply ugly kitchen of her run-down listing, laying out some of the other basic supplies she’d brought—food, chocolate, camping dishes, paper towels.  And wondered whether to stay or go.

“You can do it that way if you want to break your back.”  Raven’s voice had been stuck in disdain mode for the last ten minutes.

“Who the hell puts a roller on a big pole?”  Lizard was getting testier.  “We’d probably just paint the damn windows shut or something.”

Lauren winced.  The guy at the paint store had sworn by the extender poles.  Given that both her crew were barely tickling five feet tall, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“
Some
of us are not totally incompetent painters.”

“
Some
of us have to sell this house after we’re done.”

“Not in those clothes.”  Raven snickered, a nice change of pace from utterly obnoxious.  “You’re going to be a puke-green zombie by lunchtime.”

“It’s
taupe
.  And if you don’t quit screwing around with the stupid pole, we won’t be having a lunch break.”

“You can’t make me keep painting.”

“Nope.”  Lizard sounded ready to chew up paint rollers and use them for shrapnel.  “But I can keep you from getting paid.”

Lauren tuned out the trash talk before it made her crazy.  And hoped like hell this wasn’t a really big mistake.  It had seemed like a good idea when she’d walked in on the pair of them the day before, one small spitfire ready to bolt, and the other desperate to help her.

It wasn’t very often Lizard’s barriers were totally down.  Even these days, when the office banter was light and the touch of friendship rode easy on both their shoulders, her young partner’s mind was usually locked up tight.

Force of long habit—and protection for the vulnerable, generous, fierce soul that hid underneath.

It had been the fierceness riding high when Lauren had found the two of them in a face-off in the empty house.

Lizard wanted to help the way some people wanted to breathe.  Her need to weigh in on the side of justice in the world was immense, and selling homes, even on the really good days, didn’t entirely fulfill that need.  She wanted to help the people who didn’t think they
deserved
a home.  Shoes she’d walked in once—and managed, with help and indefatigable resilience, to turn into styling black boots instead.

It would take time for her young associate to grow into her burning moral urgency, but there were already hints of the force for justice Lizard would one day become.  Lauren had just found out about the noodle runs—Romano had been worried. 

But helping Raven was an entirely larger kettle of fish. 

Lauren dug her head out of her ponderings long enough to track the two wielding painterly tools.  And found it oddly quiet.

Barely daring to tiptoe, she stuck her head around the corner.

They’d actually gotten to the part that involved putting paint on a wall.  Two sets of hunched shoulders, and two minds spewing flames.  Lizard hated painting.  Raven hated just about everything else.

But that wasn’t the part that had Lauren’s jaw dropping.  Lizard’s half of the wall was competent and coming along neatly, albeit not all that quickly.  Raven’s was almost done.  The girl painted in the long, sweeping runs of a professional—or what Lauren presumed a professional looked like.  She drove the roller on the end of the extender pole like she’d done it since birth.

Ooooh, boy.  Lauren winced.  That wasn’t a wrinkle she’d planned to toss Lizard’s way.

Glad to know you’re not entirely evil,
sent a dry mindvoice.

Shit.  Sorry.  Didn’t realize I was leaking. 

Duh. 

Lizard seemed mostly amused.  And a lot less aggravated than she’d sounded five minutes ago.

The shoulders under spiky blonde hair shrugged. 
No point losing my cool.

Now Lauren could hear the shaky undertones.  And the steely determination.  She replied to the latter. 
Smart.

I try. 
Hints of a mental grin now. 
And I figure there’s not much point trying to race the Queen of Paint over there.  She’s already fighting the need to fix what I’ve done.  Gonna happen any minute now.  You bring us chocolate?

It almost worked—Lauren almost bought that her ex-delinquent associate was just going to sit back and take it easy.  And then she actually engaged her brain. 
You don’t do lazy.

There’s another roller, if you want to be lazy with me.
  Again with the dry-as-dust tone.  And then something different. 
I remember when I showed up in your office.