Witches Under Way (6 page)

That sounded oddly possible.  Jennie watched his retreating back, bemused.  Not that it mattered a whole lot—nobody emerged dry from a water-balloon fight, and there really wasn’t all that much difference between soaked and drowned.  She turned back to Lauren.  “So, do we have a strategic genius in our camp?”

“Sure.”  Lauren grinned.  “Why do you think I worked so hard to recruit you?”

~ ~ ~

Elsie clutched her new purchase, staring at the miniature instructions in distress.  Even if she could squint and read them, none of it seemed to match the parts of her new iPod.  The last music player she’d owned had possessed two slots for cassette tapes and buttons clearly labeled On, Play, and Stop.

She’d gone into the Apple store armed with all the latest research, determined to find a way to explore the world of music.  The salesperson had been very nice.  He’d found her the kind of earphones you could use and still hear traffic noise and not ruin your hearing.  He’d helpfully explained storage and screens and something about mixing music up while you played it.  And she’d tried not to panic when he’d shown her how many songs were on iTunes for her to choose from. 

How was she supposed to remedy her musical idiocy when there were eighteen million songs and she couldn’t even get her darned iPod to turn on?

“Cool iPod.”  Lizard walked into the kitchen.  “New?”

Elsie swallowed her pride.  “Yes.  Do you by any chance know how to turn it on?”  She was eternally grateful when Lizard didn’t laugh, and even more grateful when a magic touch or two had pretty lights coming to life on her screen.

Two minutes later, her new toy was all hooked up and blaring one of Lizard’s favorite songs.  Elsie was pretty sure their musical tastes weren’t going to overlap very much.  “Is there a way to turn it down a little?”

Lizard grinned.  “I can probably find some old-lady music for you, if you like.”

That she could probably manage to do on her own.  Elsie tapped her computer, feeling frazzled and more than a little grumpy.  “I’ll just look around a little.  The man at the store showed me how to use the iTunes site.”

“It might have been more useful if he’d shown you how to turn on your iPod.”  Lizard  opened the laptop’s lid, hit a few keys, and looked up.  “So, you’re not into rap.  What kind of music do you like?”

Was there no such thing as personal space in Witch Central?  Elsie squirmed and then straightened her spine.  Trying to remedy a personal weakness wasn’t a reason to be embarrassed.  “I don’t know, exactly.  My mother always played classical music in our house.  I’m fond of opera.”

Lizard raised an eyebrow.  “Opera rocks your socks, girl.  Weird, but true.”

Elsie sighed and gave up.  “Yes, it does.  But I want to figure out what else I like.  Normal music—the stuff most people listen to.”  She waved at the computer.  “How can I do that when there are eighteen million songs to choose from?”

“You were just going to get online and start shopping?”  Lizard grinned.  “Don’t they teach you shrinks anything in school?”

Elsie was pretty sure nothing as incidental as personal musical taste had ever graced the hallowed classrooms of Harvard.  Time to throw herself on her roommate’s mercy.  “If you were me, what would you do?”

Lizard rolled her eyes to the ceiling.  “If I find you some good music, will you write my essay for me?  It should be easy for you.” 

It was shockingly tempting.  For just a moment or two, and then sanity prevailed.  “That would be highly unethical.  What’s the topic for your essay?”

“How technological illiteracy can be a handicap in modern society.”  Her roommate snickered and held up the iPod.  “But don’t worry—I’ll change names to protect the innocent.”  She stood up and headed for the hallway.  “I have forty-three hours of homework to do.  I’ll have some music stuff for you tomorrow.”

Elsie felt oddly empty.  “Have you eaten?”

Lizard stopped dead, thinking.  “Crap.  No wonder I’m hungry.”

“You can study down here.”  Elsie didn’t stop to examine why this was suddenly so important to her.  “I’ll make some dinner, and you can work on your essay.”  She picked up her new iPod.  “Here.  You can even listen to that really loud rap stuff if you want.”

She had no idea what the strange look in Lizard’s eyes meant.  And no idea what she was going to make for dinner, given her limited repertoire and their empty fridge.  But it felt… nice.

Chapter 5

Elsie opened the door of the oven, rather proud at the muffins she pulled out.  Not bad for 6 a.m.  She’d realized the evening before that desire to cook had very little to do with actual results, so she’d knocked on Caro’s door at ten o’clock at night and asked for a recipe to try.  Amazingly enough, her first attempt looked almost like muffins, except for the little burned bits on the edges.

She’d set the table nicely and walked to the store for orange juice while the muffins were in the oven.  It wasn’t biscuits, but it was an acceptable breakfast for her first baking attempt.  And it might make up for the disaster of a dinner she’d tried to serve the night before.  Good intentions weren’t always edible, especially when served with undercooked chicken.

Hearing Lizard’s clomping on the stairs, she grabbed two—very hot!—muffins and put them on the pretty green plates she’d also found at the store.  She looked up as her roommate blew into the kitchen.  “Good morning.  I made breakfast for you—I hope you like banana muffins.”

“Gotta run.”  Lizard swooped a muffin off the counter and dropped it on the floor.  “Shit! These are still hot.”

Elsie looked at her breakfast table for two in dismay.  “They’ll be cool in just a minute.  I was hoping we’d have a chance to eat together.”  She took a closer look at Lizard, currently tossing a muffin hand to hand.  “You look tired—did you have trouble sleeping?”

“Yeah.  Essays and neighborhood maps kind of get in the way of the whole shutting-your-eyes thing.”

“You were up late?”  Her roommate really did look exhausted, with big circles under her eyes and the kind of zippy edginess that came from too much coffee.

Lizard snorted.  “Dunno.  Is 4 a.m. late?”  She shoved the muffin in her bag.  “More sleep than I got the night before, though.  Thanks for the food.”

Elsie stared at the suddenly empty kitchen doorway, feeling bereft.  She turned around, looking at her now-sad table and its two slightly burned muffins. 

She jumped as the front door slammed, and backed up in surprise as Lizard torpedoed into the kitchen.  “Sorry, I forgot about the music thing.  Do you have your computer?”

Elsie pointed at the counter—Caro had emailed her the muffin recipe. 

“Pandora.”  Lizard pulled up a website on Elsie’s laptop.  “It’s a music site that starts with a song you like, and then plays songs that are related.”  Soft sounds began streaming out of the computer.  “You just need to thumbs up or down here when you love or hate something, and it will learn your preferences.”

Elsie moved in, fascinated.

Lizard looked up and grinned.  “Perfect for someone who doesn’t know squat about music.”

Elsie frowned, catching strains of the music.  “What’s playing now?  I like that.”

“Dude named Leonard Cohen.”  Lizard increased the volume.  “This song’s the closest real-music thing I know to opera.  Lots of people sing it, but he wrote it, so I started with the original.”

The music tugged on Elsie.  Such a deep voice, wise and sad.  And then the chorus hit, and she grabbed the counter to hold herself up, totally staggered.

Lizard grinned and clicked on the thumbs-up button.  “I seeded some other songs in here to get you started.  Once you figure out what you like, then we can put it on your iPod.”

Words finally penetrated Elsie’s musical haze.  “You worked on this?  Last night, when you were up so late?”

“No big.”  Lizard shrugged.  “My eyes were kind of bleeding from reading anyhow.”

Elsie stared for a moment—and then grabbed her roommate’s arm.  “Sit.  Take two minutes for breakfast.”  It wasn’t a gift like the music, but her banana muffins didn’t look all that bad.  And the green plates were pretty.  “I have orange juice, too.”

Lizard dropped into a chair.  “How come you’re getting all domestic?”

Until that moment, she hadn’t been exactly sure.  Elsie smiled.  “Someone needs to make sure we have something to eat around here.”  She nodded, pleased with her forming idea.  “Summer school is for five weeks, right?  You study, and I’ll try to learn how to cook for us a little.”

“Deal.”  Lizard guzzled her orange juice and stood up, pocketing the last half of her muffin.  “If you cook them for three minutes less, they won’t get crispy.  Our oven runs kind of hot.”  She plunked her plate and glass on the counter on her way out.  “Nice plates, by the way.  Later!”

It hadn’t exactly been a conventional breakfast.  But it had been nice.  Elsie sat tracing the swirls on her plate, a silly grin on her face. 

And then sat bolt upright, panicked, remembering why she’d gotten up at 5 a.m. in the first place.  Oh, God.  She had four hours before Jamie came to port her to Vero’s house.  Four hours to find three favorite songs.

Well, two.  That song with all the Hallelujahs was lovely. 

~ ~ ~

Lizard waved goodbye to Freddie as she hopped off in front of Berkeley Realty.  His bus was still the best place in the universe to do homework.  Maybe she could make it through her last required-reading article before Lauren got to the office. 

She pulled her computer out of her bag as she unlocked the front door and turned on the lights—and then cursed roundly as a stranger walked in the door right behind her.  So much for getting to work early to study.  Should have stayed on the bus.

She tried not to growl as she turned around, sticking out her hand.  “I’m Lizard.  How can I help you?”  Then she blinked.  He was way younger than most of their clients, and cute, in a geeky kind of way.  Maybe he was lost.

“I’m Josh.  I just moved to Berkeley and I need a place to live.  I heard you guys were the best.”

Probably not lost, then, and she couldn’t very well kick him out after he said stuff like that.  “Sit.  I’ll get coffee.”  She sighed, trying to remember it was her job to be nice now.  “Do you want something to eat?”

“No, thanks.  I just had breakfast at this awesome greasy diner.”

Lizard grinned.  “The one with the happy faces on the plates?”

“Yeah.  Guess I’m not the first person to discover it, huh?” He waved at her chair.  “It’s okay—you don’t have to wait on me or anything.  Just help me find a place to live.  Hotels suck.”

He looked like a starving student, and rentals in this town weren’t cheap.  Lizard frowned.  “What brings you to Berkeley?”

“The desire to see green things.”  He shrugged.  “I’m working at a small start-up in San Francisco, but I don’t really need to be there every day.  I did the downtown condo thing in Seattle, but I think I want an actual neighborhood vibe this time.”

Okay, definitely not a starving student.  “You might want to walk around some.  Figure out the kinds of areas that fit the vibe you’re looking for.”  She might even be talked into taking him on a tour.

“Already did that.”  He grinned and pulled a cool gadget out of his pocket.  Then he clicked a couple of buttons and a map sprung up on the wall—a color-coded, annotated map.  “Red are the places I liked best.”

She was in geek love.  With the map.  “How did you make it do the color gradients like that?”  Google Maps had so far resisted her efforts to do the same thing.

“I tweaked the API code.”

Lizard tried not to drool and pulled up her own maps, which suddenly looked shabby by comparison.  “This shows the price range and kinds of houses by neighborhood.  Let’s see how the areas you like overlap with your price range.  Do you want to rent or buy?”

“Buy.  And price isn’t a big deal.”  Josh looked moderately embarrassed.  “I sold my last company for quite a bit of money.  You tell me what my budget needs to be to get what I want.”

Cripes.  Clients weren’t supposed to say stuff like that. 

And she couldn’t take him to see every listing in Berkeley, or even just in his red neighborhoods.  Time to narrow things down a little.  “So, you want green stuff.  The kind you look at, or the kind you mow?”

He grinned.  “Look at.  I’m better with computers than lawn mowers.  Things with motors tend to break when I touch them.”

Check.  No grass, or window-box air conditioners.  Space for a home office, probably.  Not a problem on an unlimited budget.  “What else?”  She glanced back at his totally mag map.  “Tell me about the neighborhoods you liked best.  What things turned an area red for you?”

“That’s going to blow my cool, single-guy cover.”  He sighed.  “I liked the ones with kids biking down the street and little old ladies taking care of their flowers.  Where people actually seem to stop and talk to each other, or a cute kid on a skateboard told me where to find the best fried-egg breakfast in town.”

If she hadn’t been a mindreading witch, Lizard would have been sure he was kidding.  Young, rich, cute guys didn’t want family neighborhoods where people liked to stop and chat.  But this one really did.