Witches in Flight (19 page)

“You block what you don’t want to know, and do it very
well.”
 
Lauren pushed over a cup of
coffee.
 
“Here, have a caffeine hit
and get cheery—we have clients coming in an hour.”

Lizard drank—Lauren stocked the office with seriously good
coffee.
 
“How about…
you
have clients.
 
I still have to deal with the Jameson
paperwork.”

“Multitask.”
 
Her
boss leaned back, smiling.
 
“Nice
job getting the Jamesons out of your hair that quickly, by the way.
 
You got them a great deal.”

Somebody needed to tell that to Claire Jameson.
 
“If she ever needs to buy another
house, I’m retiring.
 
Or telling
her my name is Hannibal, or something.”

It took mad drinking skills to keep the coffee out of Lauren’s
nose.

Lizard grinned.
 
This was a way better start to her day than Elsie in an infatuated
daze.
 
Her boss was perfectly happy
without a guy messing things up.

Lauren eyed her more seriously now.
 
“Guys don’t always mess things up.”

Lizard scowled.
 
Sloppy mind barriers again—she relaxed them way too often at
work.
 
“Get out of my head.”

“Your head’s talking about me,” said Lauren dryly.
 
“And since it is, let me set the record
straight.
 
I don’t need a guy, but
I’m not hell-bent on scaring them all away, either.”

They obviously weren’t talking about Lauren anymore.
 
“I’m not scaring anyone.”

Lauren looked down at the desk for a moment.
 
“I don’t think Josh scares all that
easily.”

Truth.
 
Threatening
to make him chicken dance through his own boardroom had gotten her exactly
nowhere.
 
“He knows I’m a witch.”

Lauren’s eyebrows flew up.
 
“You told him?”

Right before hell froze.
 
“No.
 
Jamie’s got a big mouth.
 
Apparently he doesn’t care if half the
universe knows he can zap things with his mind.”
 
And that still scared her silly.
 

Her boss frowned.
 
“Sometimes things are a little loose in Witch Central.
 
They forget that most people aren’t on
a first-name basis with a witch or two.
 
How did Josh take it?”

Like he’d discovered she liked chocolate-dipped Oreos for
breakfast.
 
“He wanted to know if I
could read his mind during the board meeting.”

Lauren mostly managed to hide her grin.
 
“Trying to keep you on your best
behavior?”

No.
 
As much as
she’d wanted him to do something that would let her be righteously pissed off,
he’d been awesome.
 
“He wanted my
help.
 
To convince the suits.”

“Smart guy.”
 
Her
boss wasn’t bothering to hide her amusement at all now.
 
“Jamie says you rocked, by the way.”

“Nah.”
 
Lizard
grinned, remembering the old guy in the baggy sweater, with the grumpy face and
the agile mind.
 
“They all love
Josh.
 
He could have sold them a
phone book written on stone tablets.”

 
“Yeah.”
 
Lauren was back to looking
serious.
 
“Doesn’t seem like you’re
buying what he’s trying to sell you.”

Crap.
 
How had they
gotten back to that again?
 
“He’s
not my type.”

Her boss just snorted.
 
“Try again.”

“I’m not his type.”
 
Lizard let some of her anger fly.
 
“I’m a delinquent, part-time street kid who never finished high school
and used to run spreadsheets for bookies and jack cars for giggles.
 
I’m cleaning up okay now, but I’m not
Josh Hennessey girlfriend material.”
 
The world needed to take off their gooey glasses and see straight for a
minute.

“I didn’t think you were Berkeley Real Estate material.”
 
Lauren sipped her coffee almost
meditatively.
 
“Too much attitude,
not enough responsibility, and a wardrobe and a scowl that were going to scare
away all my clients.”

Lizard blinked.
 
“Then why did you take me?”

“Jennie asked.”

Right.
 
This was
Witch Central, where you could ask someone to take on a delinquent with a
crappy attitude and worse wardrobe and people would say yes.
 
Everything Lauren had said was right—and
it still made Lizard mad.
 
“I’m
good at this.
 
And I’m getting
better.
 
And most clients are fine
with my attitude.”

“Yup.”
 
Lauren
pulled a file out of her drawer.
 
“It didn’t work out at all like I expected.”
 

Lizard scowled.
 
Darned witches and their beat-around-the-bush conversations.
 

~ ~ ~

Yoga mats were not ideally shaped to form a circle.
 
Elsie grinned as she watched twelve
workshop students try to assemble themselves and their long, rectangular mats
into the requested shape.
 
Nat was
right—almost any activity could be a teaching moment.

And somehow, that eased the first-day jitters in her belly.
 
The workshop was carefully planned, and
she had the incredible Natalia Sullivan at her side.
 
It would be fine.

One dark-haired woman seemed particularly distressed by the
not-quite-circle chaos.
 
Elsie dug
for a name and stepped to her shoulder.
 
“It won’t be a perfect circle, Kathy, and that’s okay.”

“It would work better if we all backed up eighteen inches or
so.”
 
The woman clutched her mat a
little tighter.
 
“Or if we had two
more students.
 
That way, there
would be four mats in each quarter circle, and the layout would be clearer.”

And Nat was right again—sometimes karma had a wicked sense
of humor.
 
With memories of green
sticky tape dancing in her head, Elsie tried to help.
 
“It’s not really the shape that matters.
 
We want you to be able to share easily
with the group, feel part of the whole.”

Dark brown eyes spun in confusion.
 
“Won’t that be easier if the circle is neatly arranged?”

Elsie smiled.
 
She’d
run therapy groups for years, and she’d always made sure the chairs were
perfectly aligned.
 
“I used to
think so, but I’ve learned that sometimes a little disorder is okay.”

Kathy laid her mat on the ground, unease seeping out of every
pore.
 
“I guess you really did mean
that part about pushing us out of our comfort zone.”
 

They hadn’t even started yet, but Elsie felt empathy
tugging.
 
The green tape was not so
long ago.

Elsie moved to her own mat, thrilling as eyes turned in her
direction. Nat folded into lotus on the other side of the circle and most of
their students tried to follow suit, with varying degrees of success.
 
Dark-haired Kathy’s lotus was
picture-perfect—and her eyes were glued to the seriously crooked mat of
the man beside her.

Elsie wondered briefly if someone had paid an actress to
impersonate the old Elsie.
 

And then remembered she had a workshop full of students
expecting her to do something.
 
She
looked around the room, putting a greeting in her eyes and her voice.
 
“Good morning, everyone.
 
I want to welcome you to our
Midsummer’s Journey workshop.
 
We
hope to do some work together here—some of it fun, some of it perhaps a
little tricky.”
 
She grinned at the
man beside Kathy who was still struggling to sit cross-legged.
 
“Some of us will be working on more
flexible legs, and others, like me, will be working on more flexible
minds.
 
I promise you, my task is a
lot harder.”

It made her feel really good when he laughed.

“I wanted to start us off today with some introductions.
 
And maybe not the kind you’re used
to.”
 
Elsie looked around the
room.
 
“First, tell us your
nickname—one somebody else calls you, and how it makes you feel.
 
Second, share something you do well,
and something you’re gloriously bad at.
 
And last, give us one hope you have for this workshop.”

She looked over at Kathy to start, not at all surprised at the
orderly, boring answer that came.
 
Kenny beside her was much funnier, even if he forgot to provide most of
what she’d asked for.
 
Around the
room the voices went, Elsie’s first links to the twelve people who would share
their lives with her and Nat for the next few days.

Hopes for insight, relaxation, and more flexible legs.
 
People who were good at giving
directions, bad at listening to them—and people who were exactly the
opposite.
 
A tiny woman whose
husband called her Jolly Green, and a quiet guy who answered to Skunk.

Elsie filed it all away, fascinated.
 
One last woman introduced herself, and then a crooked circle
of people looked at Elsie expectantly.

And she realized that in all the time she and Nat had spent
preparing, she’d never once considered her own answer.
 
“Well, a small boy who teaches me how
to be messy calls me Elsie-Belsie,” she began, smiling.
 
“I streak down a hill on my bike
fantastically well, and I shouldn’t be let near chicken in the kitchen.
 
And my hope for this workshop…”
 
She stopped, a multitude of wrong
answers at the tip of her tongue—desires for others, or wishes for the
success of this new baby she and Nat had created.
 

And then she found it.

“I hope to see what I’m meant to be doing next week.”

It didn’t matter that most of the class laughed.
 
A quiet glow somewhere under her left
ribs said she’d gotten the answer exactly right.

~ ~ ~

Did everyone have to be so freaking gooey?
 
Lizard slumped into a seat in her
advanced poetry seminar and scowled at Lori and Jeremy.
 
Way too early in the day for all that
lovebird stuff.

Lori just rolled her eyes.
 
“Find your own guy.”

She’d had plenty.
 
They all eventually ended up wanting things you didn’t want to
give.
 
“I think kissing’s illegal
in class.”
 
The campus had the
world’s longest webpage full of rules—if she was really lucky, that was
one of them.

“Not today.”
 
Jeremy
handed over a sheet of paper.
 
“We’re starting on all the great romantic poets.”

That so wasn’t on the schedule.
 
Then again, Professor Allard pretty much didn’t believe in
actual outlines for his classes.
 
“How come you always get the inside scoop?”
  
Lizard grabbed the paper.
 
A list of required reading, mostly works she already
knew.
 
Heavy on the “love is
depressing” poets.
 
She could roll
with that.

Professor Allard cleared his throat at the top of the
table.
 
“Morning, guys.
 
Let’s start with a pop quiz.
 
Recite me four of your favorite lines
of romantic poetry.”

Jeremy grinned.
 
Lori blushed.
 
Most of the
rest of the class looked slightly panicked.
 
Lizard just rolled her eyes again as several minds searched
desperately for any four lines of poetry they knew.

And these were supposed to be the smart kids.

Lori’s friendly kick under the table came shortly before another
professorial throat clearing.
 
Frack.
 
How come she had to
go first?
 
She grabbed for the
first four lines that jumped into her head.

“Heart, we will forget him,

You
and I, tonight!

You
must forget the warmth he gave,

I
will forget the light.”

Lizard grinned at Lori.
 
She liked Jeremy and all, but if he ever turned into a jerkwad, every
girl needed at least one kick-his-butt-to-the-curb poem.