Witches in Flight (23 page)

Nat smiled, chewing happily.
 
“He’s probably going to find out.
 
Lauren is currently giving my husband mind-heck for telling
Josh he was a mind witch, but not mentioning any of his other talents.”

Oh, what tangled webs they weaved.
 
Since Lauren was presently talking to Josh, it wasn’t hard
to work out what had happened.
 
Jennie sighed.
 
Charlie was
going to be unbearable to work with after this.
 
He’d always accused her of witchery with a camera.
 
“We’re giving Josh a crash course in witch
powers, are we?
 
Has anyone warned
Lizard?”

Nat grinned.
 
“Jamie
thinks that should be your job.
 
He’s busy dishing spaghetti.”

And he’d sent one of the few messengers she was pretty much
guaranteed not to shoot.
 
Jennie
reached out with her mind.
 
Nice
try, nephew mine.
 
You started this
line of dominoes, you get to clean up the mess along the way.

The sigh she got back was long-suffering—and not at all
surprised.
 
Come dish spaghetti
for me, then?

That much she could handle, although it would make more than one
witch nervous to see her hovering over a pot in the kitchen.
 
Maybe Jamie had a “don’t worry, I’m not
the cook” apron handy.

Then again, probably not.

~ ~ ~

He’d been watching her all damn night.
 
Lizard looked up as Josh finally approached, holding
brownies in front of him like a sword.
 
He looked… tired.

She toned down her scowl a little and snagged the most
precariously balanced brownie, handing it to Charlie.

“Hey, Uncle Charlie.”
 
Josh handed off a snickerdoodle too.
 
“Can I borrow Lizard for a minute?”

“’Bout damn time.”
 

Charlie looked all too happy to sit and scarf sugar.
 
So much for her tough old guard
dog.
 
Lizard pulled herself up and
nodded at the door.
 
“Outside?”
 
She could use some air, and Witch
Central could use a lot less fodder for their gossip.

The long evening shadows when they stepped outside soothed her
soul.
 
She’d always loved the play
of shadow and light—life on the edges.
 

Jeebers, the spaghetti sauce was making her wax poetic.
 
She looked sideways at Josh.
 
He still looked kind of
bedraggled.
 
“I like your uncle
Charlie.
 
He’s sweet.”

That startled a laugh out of her companion.
 
“You might be the first person in the
history of the universe to call him that.”

“Then nobody’s been looking very hard.”
 
Lizard headed down a pedestrian path to
the park.
 
Not quite a dark alley,
but at least it hinted at privacy.
 
“How come he’s here?”

“I was hoping you’d asked him that.”
 
Josh shoved his hands in his pockets.
 
“All I got was a voicemail saying he
was here and he’d see me at dinner.”

He really hadn’t known.
 
“Does he always stick his camera in people’s faces like that?”
 
She’d managed to forgive him over a
plate of spaghetti—now she was just curious.
 
Her fingers toyed with the roll of film in her pocket.

“Yup.”
 
Josh
grinned.
 
“This is his third
Hasselbad.
 
The last one got broken
over his head by some irate actress.”

It was hard to imagine Charlie taking paparazzi photos.
 
“Why?
 
She didn’t want her picture taken?”

“He made her look old.
 
And then put her portrait up in a gallery showing on Madison Avenue in
New York, in size extra-large.
 
She
showed up at the opening and cracked his camera over his head.”

That, she could imagine.
 
“How much did the picture sell for?”

Josh’s laugh warmed her in odd places.
 
“Enough to pay for the next camera.”

They stepped into the park—a tiny little bit of grass, a
small sandbox, and two decent climbing trees.
 
Lizard strolled to the base of the bigger of the two and
headed up, unsurprised when he followed.
 
She settled into a convenient crook.
 
On the cold days, she’d ridden Freddie’s bus.
 
On the warm days, she’d hung out in a
lot of trees.
 
Not even the cops ever
looked up.

He had a question—she could see it hanging in his
mind.
 
And flatly refused to look
closely enough to find out what it was.
 
She probably didn’t want to know.
 
Her gut said this moment had been coming for a long time—the one
where he found out something about her that made him squirm.
 
And in the blabberfest of a Witch
Central spaghetti-fest, he could have easily heard plenty.

So she waited.
 
And
stacked her armor in place.
 
And
ignored the very small corner of her heart that wished.

When his question came, it was entirely different than anything
she’d been dreading.

“Tell me about Witch Central.”

Lizard eyed him suspiciously.
 
Something about this was really important to him, but she
had no idea what.
 
“It’s just a
shorthand name for some of the people who live in this neighborhood.”
 
Which made it sound a bit like a gang.
 
She tried again.
 
“You know that Jamie and I can mindread.
 
So can a few others.”

He swung a leg over a tree branch, face in that casual mode she
was beginning to recognize as his most dangerous.
 
“Lauren says there’s more than mindreading involved.”

Sweet fracking hell—could none of the witches in her life
keep their mouths shut?
 
“Was she a
little more informative than that?”

His eyes were telling her nothing.
 
“Not really.
 
Something about Jamie levitating plates and a talent show after dinner.”

She knew nothing about any levitating plates, but his eyes said
now was a bad time to ask.
 
“Jamie
has other magic too.”

“Define ‘other magic.’”

Fine.
 
Jamie was a
big boy, and he was an idiot for not keeping his mouth shut in the first
place.
 
And maybe this way her
armor wouldn’t get too many new dings.
 
“He’s got air and fire magic—that’s probably how he levitates
stuff.
 
He’s one of the main
trainers for Witch Central.”
 
She
paused a beat, the poet knowing when she had a good line to deliver.
 
“Oh, and he can teleport.”

Josh’s eyebrows flew up.
 
“Teleport what?”

“Forks, plates, small children, himself.”
 
She had no idea what Jamie’s upper
limits were.

Even a brain-dead mind witch would have caught Josh’s flinging
emotions.
 
Amusement.
 
Disbelief.
 
Astonishment.
 
And then utter fascination.
 
“He can beam himself places?
 
Like Star Trek?”

Did nothing shake this guy?
 
“Yeah.
 
Or beam
you to Outer Mongolia.
 
Don’t piss
him off.”
 
Mongolia was probably
outside Jamie’s range, but whatever.
 
She had the sudden urge to see Josh squirm.
 
Just a little.

He grinned instead.
 
“I wonder what I have to do to get him to give me a ride.”

Magic wasn’t a game.
 
Unless you’d grown up in Witch Central your whole life, or whatever
happy-slappy universe had produced Josh Hennessey.
 
Lizard was suddenly tired of trying to pretend she lived in
that world.
 
“Go back and ask.
 
You can probably be the talent show
assistant or something.”
 
Maybe
Aervyn would drench him or singe his eyebrows or turn him into a fuzzy
caterpillar.
 
She could always
hope.
 

Lizard wiggled forward out of her crook and got ready to
jump.
 
This wasn’t her mess, and
she wasn’t cleaning it up.
 
“Night.
 
I’m heading home.”

One surprisingly strong arm wrapped around her ribcage.
 
A quick tug and she was tucked back into
the tree next to Josh, in a way that made it very clear that he was a
cuddler—and that they were nowhere close to done talking yet.
 
“You’re pretty new at Witch Central,
right?”

He had instincts to rival her boss.
 
Lizard closed her eyes and wished briefly that witches were
the biggest skeleton in her closet.
 
And then opened them again and prepared to kick Joshua Hennessey to the
curb.
 
It was way beyond time.
 
“I’m here serving my parole.”

Not even his mind flinched.
 
“What did you do?”

“Jacked a car.”

He snorted in amusement beside her.
 
“Sorry.
 
I figured
it involved the chicken dance or something.”

“Nope.”
 
No witch
misdemeanors on her record—just the ordinary kind.
 
“Moved in with this slimy guy.
 
Took his car for a ride.
 
Uncle was a cop, so I got busted.”

She could feel his eyes drilling into her head, amusement
entirely gone.
 
“Why the slimy
guy?”

Josh, meet the real Lizard Monroe.
 
“He was just one of many.
 
I lived in a world you don’t even know about.
 
Druggies, gamblers, slimeballs.
 
I’d pick the most harmless jerkwad I
could find and live with him for a while.
 
Cook, clean, keep his bed warm.”
 
She felt the sleaze oozing into place, coating her skin and sucking at
the bright spots on her soul.
 
“Kept me safer than a lot of the girls I know.”

He sat, not moving, for what felt like half her life.
 
And then he leaned over and kissed the
top of her head.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
Really sorry.”

Her heart screamed in agony.
 
What part of ‘I had sex with jerkwads’ had he not
understood?
 
“I’m not who you think
I am, Josh.
 
I’ve cleaned up some,
but Witch Central’s not my home turf.
 
I didn’t grow up a cute little witch who got to do magic tricks and eat
lots of cookies.”
 
At least not
after Grammie died.

“I’m not as stupid as you think I am.
 
Or as naive.”
 
His fingers gently traced the lines on her arms.
 
“You hung around in dirt.
 
I get that.
 
Some of it touched you—I get that too.”

She fought for air—and for the courage to stay away from
what his fingers offered.

His voice let her do neither.
 
“I’m probably supposed to say something about how it doesn’t
matter.
 
But it does.
 
Some of it doesn’t wash off, just like
your tats don’t.”
 
He kissed the
top of her head again.
 
“They’re
sexy as hell, by the way.”

The tiny voice in the corner of her heart hammered just one word
over and over.
 
Believe.

 
And then his arm
moved away, and he hopped down from the tree.
 
He looked up, his head resting against the tree branch she
sat on, and the sadness in his eyes stopped her heart.
 
“It doesn’t matter the way you believe
it does.
 
But I think you’re using
it as an excuse.
 
None of those
people back there—Jamie, Lauren, none of them jacked cars in their youth
either.”
 
He stopped a moment, and
swallowed.
 
“And you let them love
you.”

When he turned and walked away, something inside her broke.
 
And she was too sad and scared to figure
out exactly what it was.

~ ~ ~

Jamie tucked onto the couch next to his wife, breathing in the
peace of a suddenly quiet house.
 
He laid a hand on her belly, aware that quiet was going to be in short
supply in the relatively near future.
 
“Can’t believe I ran out of sauce again.
 
You’d think after this many years, I’d know better.”