An Imperfect Witch (23 page)

Jamie paused in his roughhousing for a minute, eyeing his big sister. 
You catch that?

She had. 
Yeah.  I’m on it. 
With zero children currently hanging off her limbs, it only seemed fair.

She walked in the direction of the mental leak and then hesitated, watching the young woman who had sent out the short-lived distress call.  With most of the younger crowd in Witch Central, the correct fix would be ice cream and a small dose of mothering.  Lizard was different.  A squooshy and wildly generous heart, nested in a soul that still carried a lot of scars.

Someone who’d grown up without ice cream and safe havens, used to doing her hurting in private.

New lives came with new rules—but still, Nell would invade as gently as possible.  She walked the remaining steps to Lizard’s side, tracking the young poet’s gaze.  Josh, with Bean’s rosy cheeks and crazy Mohawk hair nestled against his chest.  The kind of tableau that melted even the hardened hearts of mothers of five.

Or perhaps melted them the most.  “They’re awfully cute.”

“Yeah.”  One word, laced with stay-out-of-my-business venom.  And pain.

Nell was immune to the former.  “Toddlers have been sleeping on Devin since he was ten.”  Truth, and a message.  Nobody had to line up to make babies for Josh’s arms.  Not yet.

Lizard almost managed a smile.  “Probably on Josh, too.”

“The first time I saw Daniel cuddling a baby, I totally wigged out.”

Blue eyes flooded with suspicion.

“Chill.”  Nell rolled with her instincts.  “This isn’t a lecture, I promise.”

The suspicion eased.  A little.  Lizard eyed Aervyn, flying by with a cape in each hand.  Recruiting superheroes.  “I guess you stopped freaking out.”

It was good not to be entirely predictable.  “Most days.  Last Thursday was pretty bad, though.”

Lizard frowned.  “You have five kids.”

Not something she usually forgot.  “Yup.  And some days, I have no idea how it happened.” 

Snickers.

Good to know they didn’t have to have
that
discussion. 

Lizard shrugged, still wearing a cloak of disbelief.  “You guys seem like you were born knowing how to do the family thing.”

“The goofy immaturity and all-for-one, one-for-all stuff, yeah.”  Mom and Dad had made sure of that.  “But the part where I have to be responsible for how another little human being turns out?”  Nell smiled, remembering precisely how she’d felt about that.  “When I met Daniel Walker, nobody would have picked either of us as parent material.”

Josh and Lizard would have beat them in a contest, hands down. 

Lizard’s gaze had shifted now.  To Raven, casually slouched against the fence, consuming a whole lot of brownie.  “It’s not so easy to figure out the medium-sized people, either.”

“I live with a fourteen-year-old.”  Nell sighed.  “Some days, I’m pretty sure he’s an alien.  Life doesn’t always wait until we figure stuff out.”

Suspicion flared.  “Have you been talking to Moira?”

Not recently.  “Nope.  Have you?”

“Yeah.”  Lizard aimed a kick at a clump of something that looked like Martian goo.  Leftover magic.  Hopefully.  “She’s been helping me figure out the grown-up thing.”

No one was better at prodding adult witches into being than Moira Doonan.  But maybe a different two cents was worth putting out there.  “Some people are born all grown up.  The rest of us just learn to fake it reasonably well.”

Lizard’s face was totally blank.  But her mind listened.

“There are still plenty of days when I wonder who the hell picked me for this job,” said Nell quietly.  She waited a moment, letting the words land.  And then waved her husband’s direction and grinned.  “On the crazy days, I throw the keys at Daniel and go soak myself in chocolate.”

Blue eyes stared at something invisible—but a touch of humor crept in.  “Maybe Bean will puke on Josh.”

Nell remembered making a wish like that once.  She hid a smile.  Lizard probably didn’t want to know what had happened next.

Chapter 19

Her legs had a Halloween hangover.  Lauren climbed into one of Jamie’s enormous couches beside her husband, trying not to groan.  It had gotten worse since breakfast.

He grinned and started massaging her calves.  “That’ll teach you to march through half of Berkeley in six-inch heels.”

Eight.  Preteen decree—magical crows had to be tall.  And their aunt, lover of things shiny, had been unable to resist the lure of the spangly jewels that had come along with the boots from hell.  Or at least that was what she would call the black platform heels until the next time she wanted to be eight inches taller.  “I’m never taking them shoe shopping again.”

Three girls in the corner giggled, knowing an empty threat when they heard one.

Her sore muscles hadn’t been helped any by the hundreds of children asking her to bend over so they could check out her orb.  The darn thing had showed off half the night.  Halloween royalty.

Next year, she was making someone else carry it.

Nat came into the living room bearing a tray full of nuts, seeds, and other post-sugar-high lunch antidotes.  And grinned at all the suspicious looks.  “Don’t worry, you won’t starve.  Jamie’s just finishing the grilled-cheese sandwiches.”

Shay sat up, staunch defender of all things Auntie Nat.  “I like nuts.  Some of them, anyhow.”

Devin, defender of all things cute niece, stuck his hand bravely into one of the bowls.  “If I die, you can feed me to the squirrels.”

Aervyn leaned over his uncle’s shoulder and peered manfully at the bowl.  “I ate some peanuts yesterday.”

Lauren laughed.  Covered in caramel and chocolate was her favorite form of nut consumption too.  However, even Witch Central couldn’t consume Halloween quantities of sugar two days in a row.  She pinged Jamie through a couple of walls. 
Need help with the sandwiches?  The natives are growing restless.

Three platters thunked onto the coffee table in reply.  A man who knew the value of timely food.

Kenna picked up a wedge, dripping with gooey, cheesy goodness, oblivious to the napkin spells at least four witches in the room threw her direction.  “Teese!”

Lauren grinned.  And watched the toddler beeline for the one person in the room who had been wishing, at least intermittently, to be somewhere else.  One teenager, not quite ready for full immersion in the clan Sullivan, at least in broad daylight.  Hopefully she wasn’t allergic to cheese.

Kenna marched over to her newest friend and plunked herself in Raven’s lap.

Which produced a predictable scowl, even as arms wrapped around the little girl.

The mind witches in the room stepped down from yellow alert—there had been more than one person pondering an intervention.  Saved by the munchkins.  It happened an awful lot these days.

Kenna looked up at her human chair and fluttered her eyelashes.  “Hi.”

Teenage poker face.  “Hi, yourself.”

The toddler poked her own cheek.  “Kisses.”

Raven snickered.  “Bossy little thing, aren’t you?”

“Kisses!”  Said in a tone brooking no disobedience.

More snickers.  “Nope.”  Rock, meet hard place.

The little girl frowned, not sure what to do about clear mutiny.  And then held up her palm, a small ball of light bouncing gently.  “Pway?”

A half-smile crossed Raven’s face.  “Sorry, kiddo.  No can do.  I don’t have any of that magic stuff.”

Kenna stared, nonplussed.  And then leaned in, brain beaming six shades of adorable.  “Otay.  Raben sing.  Pwease?”

Everyone in the room was watching now, grilled-cheese sandwiches on ignore.  Jamie and Nat’s daughter could be an opinionated, short-tempered terror—but when she decided to be cute, Lauren was pretty sure the walls of heaven fell.

Assent came with an epic eye roll—but it came.  “One song, monster girl.  And then you have to go bug someone else.  Deal?”

Little-girl eyes looked up into dark ones.  Waiting.

Lauren grinned.  Toddlers were negotiation terrorists.

Raven’s face adorned itself in annoyance—but her mind radiated something entirely different.  The odd dance of kindred spirits.

The teenager shifted the little girl in her lap.  “This was my favorite song when I was your age.  But there’s only one rule.  You aren’t allowed to laugh, okay?”

Toddler eyes grew even bigger.  She’d never met a song with rules.

“
One day there was a little girl, sitting on a log.
”  Raven bumped her leg up and down in time with the song’s lyrics, in case anyone was in any doubt about the log’s identity. 

“Along there came a bright green frog.”
 Two fingers crept along the carpet, a sneak attack imminent.  “
And licked her stinky toes!”

Kenna’s giggles spilled out into the universe, bright and silly and strong.

And no one with an ounce of mind power heard them.  The pain from the corner was too strong.  Lizard lurched, sickly gray, to the edge of her chair.

“How do you know that song?”  The words were hoarse, harsh bullets.  

And when they hit Raven, they drew blood.

-o0o-

Lizard couldn’t hear the shock, or the sudden quiet, or the murmured, concerned sounds of the man wedged into the chair behind her.  All that rang in her ears were four lines to a song that a young and innocent girl had treasured beyond measure.

She stared at the person who had ripped it out of the deepest confines of her heart and let loose the thousand wails that lived behind it.

Grammie.  It had always been Gram’s song.  “My grandmother made that up one night when I was sad.”

Raven stared.  “That’s impossible.  My father wrote it for me.  When I was just a little girl.”

Bayonets landed behind the knives.  There were so few things of that small girl left to steal.  “I know eleven more verses.”

The teenager, Kenna still sitting frozen in her lap, turned white.  And in her head—the second verse rang.  Frogs and logs and stinky knees.

Grammie’s song.

  Lizard felt her soul deflating, curling in on itself.  Wrapping around what was left of a small girl who had cried herself to sleep every night Gram wasn’t there to sing the tears away.  She dug back, yanking her way into the filmy, dusty layers of awful sadness.  She’d been so very small.  And so very sad.

After her father left.

Oh, God.

Comfort now.  Wordless, deep blankets of it, coming from the woman she’d worked with for two years.  Fuzzing Lizard’s thinking.  Blurring her eyes.

Lizard slammed down mind barriers.  She needed to see.

Her eyes lasered over the invader who had crash-landed in her life.

And saw the bird bones.  The toes that turned in, even at rest.  The eyes that said way too much. 

She felt the glue to Lizard Monroe melting. 

Raven moved.  Just an inch, a hand questing in space.  “He left me too.”

The glue screamed and burst into flames.  Lizard stumbled, blind, for the door.  She had to leave before she torched the building.

He’d left her
first.

-o0o-

Oh, hell.

Post-Halloween nuclear bomb. 

Nell glanced around the room, doing mental triage.  Her girls huddled, shaken, but already leaning into the strength of sisterhood.  Nathan, her oldest son and emerging clan warrior, on alert at Moira’s side, still looking for something to fight.  Aervyn cuddled in Daniel’s lap, looking pale. 

Channel shock,
sent Lauren quietly. 
He tried to reach out to Lizard.
  Her eyes were elsewhere in the room. 
I don’t think the missiles are done yet.

No one thought that.  Raven had reached out to her sister, however weakly.  And Lizard had run.  That kind of rejection had consequences.

It surprised no one when an old Irish witch walked into the breach.

Moira lowered her teacup very deliberately to the table.  “So, sweet girl.  You have a sister.”

Raven nearly splintered.  And with the flying shreds—fury.  “We share a scumbag for a father.  That doesn’t mean anything.”

Old Irish witches didn’t scare easily.  “It means as much or as little as you want it to.”

Behind the main action, people were tending the wounded.  Ginia had moved to her little brother’s side, fingers already repairing his channels.  Nat had scooped up Mia and Shay, and Lauren was having a very delicate mental conversation with a shell-shocked toddler, still sitting in Raven’s lap.

The teenager jumped to her feet.  “No way.”  One death ray, warming up.

Jamie ported Kenna out of harm’s way.  And sent Uncle Devin with her, since he happened to be handy and very good at containing toddler fire.

And then he joined mental forces with his sister.

She felt the incoming mindlink, well aware it wouldn’t help.  Nell Walker knew a little something about epic temper tantrums.  Raven was working her way up to a doozy, and all the magic in the world wasn’t going to stop it.

“Just because the same guy happens to be our dad doesn’t make us all cozy and tight and crap.  Or give her any right to boss me around.”  The teen looked ready to spew nails.  “She thinks I’m a screwup, just like him.  She doesn’t know jack shit.”