An Imperfect Witch (22 page)

“I need to find another choice.”  Lizard had started breathing again.

And now the heart had opened enough to hear.  Moira stepped forward and took two small, strong hands in her own.  “It is never necessary to give up yourself to help another.  We sacrifice many things, but not that.  Hold true to who you are, Lizard Monroe.  Show young Raven how it’s done.  You can begin this wonderful Halloween night.” 

She smiled at the puzzled, conflicted face.  Samhain, showing its true colors. 

And a seed, coming along very nicely indeed.

Chapter 18

A night traversed a hundred times.  And always, it gave the orb pause. 

A world heading into the dark—and fighting back, dancing with the light.  Energies reaching between the worlds and across the lines of time.

The past, holding the present in a stronger grip.  Futures in the balance.

And those standing outside the flow of time could only wait.

Or at least, that had been the case on a thousand Samhain nights.

This night, perhaps, would be different.  The orb could feel the energies gathering.  So very many with power. 

A ritual it did not understand—but the one who listened did. 

The forces dismissed whatever came this night as pure silliness.

The orb was beginning to wonder if silliness might be a magic all its own.

-o0o-

It would be a very quick circle—but no less important for the speed.

Lauren amplified the mind call that would bring people to the circles, inner and outer.  In Nova Scotia, Moira would preside over a far more elaborate Samhain ritual, echoing the ceremonies of generations past.  A turning of minds and hearts to the balance of light and dark, the coming of winter, and the passing of love to those beyond the veil.

Jamie and Nat had stood in as Witch Central’s emissaries this night, and had apparently managed a bowl of lobster chowder and whirled to Cassie’s fiddling before they’d caught a transport beam back home.

In Berkeley, there was a street party about to begin, and history got shorter shrift.

Lauren smiled at the antics underway.  A strange juxtaposition from one coast to the other, but she loved them both.

The circle was already forming, well-oiled parts sliding into place.  Elders held hands with the very young, honoring the night’s closeness to the planes that came before birth and after death.  Tiny Liam and his whiff of earth magic, participating in his first circle, Superman cape at the ready.  Kenna, petting her dragon scales, and ready to breathe fire at whoever wanted some.  Nell had the dubious pleasure of trying to keep her niece’s magic playing nicely in the circle—she was the oldest fire witch with enough power to do so without getting scorched.

We hope,
sent Nell wryly.

Lauren grinned.  It was hard to take the fears of a woman with a very shiny six-foot sword all that seriously.

Nell snorted, even as she patted the tinfoil weapon her girls had created. 
I’m going to trip over this thing and kill myself.

Lauren patted the feathers on her head in return. 
Just don’t let Kenna spark my direction.  Pretty sure I’m a walking fire hazard.

It wasn’t the usual pre-circle banter, and it was a very far cry from the lovely solemnity that likely graced Fisher’s Cove this night.  But as Lauren stepped into the center of the circle, taking her position across from MonsterZilla, she fell in love, yet again, with the fantastic world in which she lived.

A circle formed with dragons, wizards, three swords, two superheros, and an Elvis impersonator. 

It should have been ridiculous. 

And as power began to gust in the crisp air of the October night, it was anything but.

-o0o-

Nell breathed a sigh of relief as enough darkness set in to permit the annual pilgrimage otherwise known as Sullivan-Walker trick-or-treating.

Ten seconds later and Aervyn would have lifted off halfway to the moon on his broomstick.

She glanced over at her son, riding the supersonic wonder that had been his uncles’ gift to the Harry-Potter-besotted kid on his fifth birthday.  He was riding reasonably sedately, feet only a foot off the ground.

Fortunately, on this one day of the year, a levitating MonsterZilla probably wouldn’t attract much notice.  Her brothers had spent decades proving exactly how blind most people in this town were to magic, at least on Halloween night.

Which was a good thing.  Partway through the circle, even Lauren’s cranky orb had been caught up in the night’s magical mood.  Its radiant glow and ethereal lightning had enthralled Kenna, and probably kept a costume or two from being scorched.  And earned it a place of honor, rapidly glue-spelled to the shoulder of its blinged-out owner.

No way were her girls letting a magical orb hide in someone’s pocket on Halloween night.  Especially one in the mood to perform.

A small child in dinosaur get-up ran past, desperately trying to keep up with a group of older kids and radiating misery about the lack of candy in his plastic pumpkin.  Aervyn gave him a small airlift—and relocated a pumpkinful of candy from the bowl on Jamie’s front porch.

Fly-by kindness.

Nell slid her fingers into Daniel’s, proud of their boy.  And proud of his older siblings, moving along the street at a pace sedate enough for old ladies, toddlers, and everyone in between. 

Kenna trotted along happily, holding Uncle Devin’s hand.  Which, since she was the head on his hastily constructed DragonZilla costume, had the effect of making him look decapitated.  At some point she’d tire and ride on his shoulders, and then Devin would just look like a really oversized kid.

Most of the other adults on the street slid by as shadows, quietly trailing their costume-clad children.  Nell wanted to shake them.  Halloween was meant to be experienced, not observed.

Witch Central didn’t have that problem.  And watching her husband throw elaborate fake pitches by crystal-ball light at every potential catcher in the neighborhood, she was wildly grateful.

On this night, as no other, immaturity rocked.

-o0o-

Jamie Sullivan held his wife’s hand, happy for now with their position in the middle of the Sullivan Halloween amoeba. 

And kept a staunch physical eye and several magical ones on his irascible daughter.

Last year this time, Kenna had been a drowsy, barely walking babe riding on his back.  This year, she had embraced the Halloween spirit with willful passion, even if she had only the vaguest idea why she was walking the streets of Berkeley dressed as dragon brains.

Her cousins had promised candy and fun, and that had been enough.

Magic tickled the group as they walked.  Dev, sending little air bumps the direction of Aervyn’s broom.  An uncle well aware of what it was to be a boy just barely hanging on to self-control.  The world’s most powerful witchling giggled and managed to avoid hitting a tree.

His mother turned around and rolled her eyes—but no one missed the tiny, well-behaved flames leaping to life on Aervyn’s broom.

Nell, too, knew what called to her son this night.

A train of children broke away from the group, off to seek their next candy fix.

Jamie looked around—the streets were busy tonight.  He squeezed Nat’s hand.  “Think we left enough candy out on our porch?”  Yet another Sullivan family tradition.  An enormous bowl of the very best Halloween treats, carefully vetted and voted on each year.  The gallitos from Costa Rica were this year’s favorite. 

And over the bowl, a sign. 
Take two, any two.

Complete with a water-pistol spell that took aim at anyone over four feet tall who seriously abused the number two. 

Nat chuckled.  “Any more and the porch might have needed some engineering help.”

Trust his wife to be the practical one.  Or not—6 a.m. yoga this morning had involved a lot of wigs, capes, and one guy learning the hard way why most people didn’t try handstands while wearing a sword.  And his last name hadn’t even been Sullivan.

Jamie kissed Nat and moved forward to take his daughter’s hand.  Darkness had settled in full earnest.

Time to make some dragon fire.

-o0o-

“You look cute.”

Lizard glared up at the guy beside her and contemplated murder.  “The next person who calls me that is going to get a glitzy purple butterfly stuffed up their nose.”

Josh only laughed.

Next year, he was so getting a princess costume.  She knew who to bribe.

He leaned over and kissed her forehead.  “You’ve been quiet.”

Yeah.  She’d been watching Sierra all night.  Bubbly and bright and related by blood to exactly no one in Witch Central. 

And it would take a genetic test to prove it.  Tonight Sierra had little sisters, roughhousing big brothers, part-time dibs on a snoring baby of undetermined relationship, and a pistol-toting old lady who gave her gramma hugs and kept trying to introduce her to some dude in a pirate hat.

Family.  No matter what the DNA said.

She sighed, and the words slipped out all by themselves.  “They make this family stuff look easy.”

His fingers slid into hers.  So damn quickly he understood.  “You’re not nearly as bad at that as you think.”

Somehow, the mess with him and Raven had all become one mess.  “I’m not good enough.”  If she were, she’d know what to do with the world’s most awesome guy in a cape and a teenager who was going to be homeless in two more days.

His eyes followed hers.  Raven, giggling as she chased Aervyn under a low arbor.  She looked about twelve.  “She’s having a really good time tonight.”

“They made her feel part of things.”  They always did.  And even if it evaporated in the light of morning, Raven wouldn’t forget.

Lizard hadn’t.

She just wished paying it forward wasn’t so damn hard to figure out.

-o0o-

Moira looked into the dark expanses, arms stretched wide to the past and future.

She didn’t need a timepiece to know that midnight had arrived.  Samhain, straddling the line halfway between the fall equinox and winter solstice.  A changing of the guard.

The sky had decked herself out tonight to celebrate.  Nary a cloud in the sky, and the stars had polished themselves brightly, as Great-gran had been wont to say.  A universe steeped fully in her own moment of import.

Moira breathed in of crisp and salty and timeless.  The surface of Fisher’s Cove never changed overmuch.  Roots, for those who needed them.  But it had been a year of babies walking and talents emerging and love coming to roost in their wee village.  She gave thanks for each, and for the music that played at her back.

Cassie would still be fiddling when she returned.

And then, a few quick hours of sleep and a trip west.  The little ones would have their candy now.  When the sun rose, the deeper events of Samhain would begin.  Moira knew not what they would be—she simply trusted that they would come.

And if the portents were wrong, as sometimes they were, she would sit for a few hours and dispense hugs and soak in the laughter of a Witch Central morning.

-o0o-

Nell looked around the chaos that was her back yard and grinned.  Halloween’s aftermath, Sullivan-Walker style.  Given the amount of sugar the kids had managed to collect from unsuspecting neighbors, it wasn’t ending anytime soon.  They’d be staying outside until everyone with enough magic to scorch her ceiling had run themselves out of gas. 

If the number of spell glows she could see at the moment was any indication, gas guzzling was well underway.

She spared a flicker of magic to monitor the circle that wiser minds had put in place around the yard perimeter.  Witchlings buzzed on candy, delayed bedtime, and sensory overload tended to the occasional magical sneeze.  And when Kenna or Aervyn sneezed these days, they put whole city blocks at risk.

Circle’s fine.
 Jamie crawled by, an undetermined number of small beings clinging to his back. 
Where are Devin and Daniel—aren’t they supposed to be pack mules too?

Nell looked around.  Her husband’s feet were sticking out from the tent repurposed as the Cave of Death, or at least so proclaimed the sign over his toes.  Devin was hunkered down with Josh in Fort Sleeping Baby at the base of the big oak tree—they’d managed to drape themselves with at least three snoring toddlers and one purloined kitten. 
Busy.  You’re on your own.

Figures. 
Jamie didn’t sound all that surprised. 
When do we get to hit these hellions with a sleep spell, again? 
One attacker rolled off the front of his shoulders and promptly grabbed a leg to clamber back on.

Nell snorted. 
When you’ve paid off your debt to humanity. 
Given the charges her little brothers had racked up, that would be sometime in the next millennium.

She was pretty sure Jamie had a smart-ass reply on the way—until both of them got hit by a mental touch totally out of tune with the happy Halloween melee.  It only lasted a second or two, and then Lizard’s normally airtight mind barriers thunked back into place.  But it had been long enough.