A Different Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 5) Page 3

  Yes. For a while.

  For as long as it took. She closed the door very quietly behind her. Time to go find a steady supply of sugar.

  -o0o-

  It wasn’t often that Lauren McCready-Sullivan got mad. Nell watched the steaming woman across the table from her and decided she was very glad she wasn’t the target.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a target. One big collective Witch Central screw-up.

  Devin reached for his wife’s hand and glared at his sister. “What happened?”

  She wasn’t entirely sure. “I think Lauren has a lot more of the story than I do.” They’d watched as Lauren and Beth vanished, transported under sharp mental orders from their resident mind witch—and then thirty minutes of nothing.

  So she’d called in the cavalry. Which had nearly charged, a dozen strong, to Chicago before a terse eight-word text had arrived. Snowing. Cell reception is crap. Need ice cream.

  Devin had beamed in on his wife’s signal with the force of an invading general, six pints in his arms. And found Lauren holed up in a coffee shop in her shorts, amusing the locals. The arrival of Devin, California beach knight in shining armor, hadn’t toned down their amusement any.

  Nell had arrived hot on his heels, carrying spoons. And didn’t give a damn what the locals thought of her attire. Lauren’s eyes had been furious—but her cheeks had been pasty white. Witch in serious need of sugar.

  However, that need met, somebody needed to find out what the hell was going on, and Devin’s brain wasn’t going to function well again until his wife looked halfway human. Nell lined up a second pint of Phish Food for her sister-in-law—half of the first had already disappeared. “Talk. Where have you been?”

  “Right here in Chicago,” said Lauren wryly. “Freezing my butt off. Why do people live in places like this?”

  Nell’s lips quirked. It wasn’t that long ago a certain mind witch had called this place home. “We could have ported you a jacket. How’s Beth doing?”

  “She’s a mess.” Lauren shrugged, a motion that still oozed weariness. “We transported someone without any warning. How would you feel?”

  “She was so quiet.” Nell tried to align the stillness of Beth’s face with the panic of her mind. “Like a statue. And thinking about such odd things.” Moira’s pendant, and the number of spindles on the chair.

  “She was trying to cope.” Lauren’s voice was still edgy, a witch far too close to magical exhaustion.

  “We were trying to help her.” Nell tried to tread carefully. “Surely transporting her again so quickly only made it worse?”

  “I made a judgment call.” Quiet words didn’t cover the lingering anger. “I don’t know if it was the right one, but we were panicking her at least as much as the transport spell did. Too much new and different.”

  Nell exchanged looks with Devin. That made no sense.

  “She’s got Asperger’s. High-functioning autism.” Lauren still spooned ice cream, but her eyes were steadier now. “Imagine you got yanked out of bed and dropped in a war zone in Afghanistan.” She looked at the two of them and sighed. “And imagine you’re not a crazy Sullivan.”

  Huh?

  “Never mind. I’ll try to explain later.” Lauren frowned and moved her chair sideways two feet. “Dammit, I can’t get a clear read.”

  Nell could feel Devin’s radar going off beside her. “Wait. You’re still monitoring her?”

  “Not Beth. Liriel. Her partner. Coven mind witch.” Spoonfuls of ice cream interspersed short sentences. “They wanted to be alone.”

  That clearly wasn’t resting easy with Lauren—she was chewing through power at ridiculous rates trying to watch over a fragile witch from this far away. Nell hoped six pints would be enough. “Was it safe to leave her?”

  Sparks hit Lauren’s eyes almost as fast as they hit Devin’s.

  Oops. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I’m sure you wouldn’t have left her if it wasn’t.”

  “S’okay.” Lauren waved a spoon. “None of us had much time to think. I did the best I could, but it’s entirely possible I screwed up. Liriel seemed very competent, though.”

  A crazy situation and an unusual witch on the verge of panic. “You took charge while the rest of us were still trying to find our noses.”

  “Her mind was a screaming mess. I figure that nominated me.” Lauren’s eyes were somber. “It was bad, Nell. We really scared her.”

  Yup, and the weight of that would have Realm’s programming team up into the wee hours setting up yet more fail-safes around their transport spells. “I know.”

  Two pairs of eyes met in shared guilt.

  They’d blown some poor witch to shreds—and then their resident mind witch had stepped in, salvaged the pieces, taken her home, and was now burning every inch of her considerable power trying to monitor Beth through feet of concrete and a thousand competing minds.

  Nell shook her head—no wonder Devin looked ready to conquer several large countries. “You should have paged us sooner.”

  “Yeah.” Lauren rolled her eyes. “Tell the weather guy.”

  Freaking snow. Nell took a deep breath. They couldn’t change the past, and the next step was to make sure the initial crisis was over. “What now?”

  “I don’t know. But she’s improving, I think.” Lauren dug back into her Phish Food. “What I can pick up through walls and a ton of people, anyhow. She lives in the apartment above the shop across the street. The neighbors are having a Christmas party. Lots of interference.”

  “So stop monitoring her from this far away.” Devin’s face was mutinous. “We’ll go knock on the door and check in on her like normal people.”

  His wife reached over and kissed his cheek, gave him a spoon, and then tilted her head to the side, a woman listening to a small voice in the wilderness. “No need. Liriel’s calling. Time for me to go up.”

  “Not alone.” Devin was on his feet like a shot. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.” Lauren’s voice held love—and finality. “Beth doesn’t do well with strangers, and we’ve already ganged up on her today. Just me. It will be a small miracle if I make it in the door. If someone had flattened you like that, I’d skewer them and ask questions later.”

  Nell hid a grin as her brother spluttered—matrimony had not been good for his ability to have the last word. And there was more than one way to skin a cat. She checked one last message from Jamie and held out her phone. If they were sending a witch out on a mission, they could at least give her a bat signal. One not dependent on cooperative weather patterns.

  Lauren frowned. “Yours isn’t going to work any better than mine in this snow.”

  “It will now.” The triplets and Jamie had just ringed greater Chicago with magically enhanced receivers. If Lauren so much as breathed on the phone, they’d know.

  Magic had screwed up once today—it wasn’t happening again.

  Chapter 3

  The irony of knocking on a strange witch’s door in the middle of a Chicago winter was not lost on Lauren. A full circle of sorts—she’d been that witch not so long ago.

  However, if memory served, she hadn’t been all that thrilled with Jamie’s arrival, and all he’d done was levitate a few plates. Lauren still had no idea how to adequately apologize for accidentally porting someone halfway across a continent.

  That Liriel had sent for her at all was a rather large surprise.

  Lauren squared her shoulders—realtors dealt with the inane and the abysmal all the time. She’d manage.

  She lifted a hand to the door and jumped as it quietly slid open. Liriel’s deep gray eyes regarded her with a mix of suspicion and resignation. The guardian at the gate. “Beth has asked to see you.”

  “I’ll be happy to talk to her.”

  “She’s still shaky.”

  The guardian wasn’t budging yet. There was something she wanted, and a good negotiator knew when to lay all her cards on the table—fast. “We screwed up, and we know
it. I’ll be working very hard not to do that again.”

  “It’s not the first time,” said Liriel softly, eyes flashing. “You nearly broke our coven.”

  Oh, God. “That wasn’t our intent.” Lauren’s memories were mostly of the homesick guy she’d been with, but clearly they’d caused damage—Liriel’s mind made that very clear. “I was still a baby witch, and Jamie was away from home and out of his element. I’m sure we could have handled things far better than we did.”

  “Yes.” Liriel paused, choosing her words. “You didn’t respect our magic. I know it doesn’t meet your standards, but we work hard at our craft. If you enter our home today, I ask you for that respect.”

  Ouch. And ouch again. Lauren closed her eyes, well aware she was running on empty. “That seems like an important conversation to have, and I promise you, we’ll have it. Know that I have immense respect for the way both of you have rolled with this travesty of a day. But I’m a witch about out of gas, and Beth wanted to talk. She feels like our first priority right now. And if you have a cookie to spare, I’d be eternally grateful.”

  The first hints of a smile teased Liriel’s lips. “I’m sure we can find you something.” She pulled open the door. “Beth is in the living room, off to your right. I’ll fix a couple of things in the kitchen and be right in.”

  Lauren knew a skilled diplomat when she met one. Liriel was making the setup very clear—Beth was the focus here. And getting through the front door had only been the first test.

  Sometimes there was nowhere to go but forward. Lauren squared her shoulders and made herself a promise. The next time she dropped in on the Witches’ Lounge, there would be long underwear, a lifetime supply of coffee, and a dozen emergency cookies in her purse.

  She walked down the hall, sending out a quiet mental scan as she went. The frantic, panicked energies of an hour ago were gone, replaced by guarded calm.

  Beth looked up as she walked into the living room. “Hello. Thank you for coming back. I have some questions, and Liri thought you might be willing to answer them.”

  The formality hurt Lauren’s heart. “It’s the least I can do. First, however, let me apologize profusely. I’m not entirely sure what happened yet, but magically kidnapping you was deeply awful. We’ll do what we can to make it right.”

  “You have power beyond what I’ve ever known.” Beth let out a breath. “Perhaps that’s why all the old texts have so many prohibitions and chastisements to work carefully.”

  The old texts knew that witches were far less than perfect. Lauren took a seat without speaking—she could feel more words coming.

  “Tell me of this place. The one with enough magic to transport an entire person and reassemble her again.”

  That was no small request. “There’s an informal witch community in Berkeley. One I’m still learning about myself.” Lauren decided it was never too early to start apologizing for trampling things, no matter how unintentional it had been. “When you first met me, I was a brand-new witch. Two years ago, I had no idea I had power of any kind.”

  Beth’s eyes grew larger by the word. “Liri says you have immense skill.”

  That was a truth that still sat strangely in Lauren’s soul. “I’m not alone. Witch Central has a lot of people with strong talent.”

  “And they came to find you?”

  Now things got sticky. “Sort of. I was the first witch found by the spell that fetched you.” And memories of being pulled into a simple chat room caused new spurts of sympathy for the restrained woman across the room. “It started with a pint of ice cream…”

  The story was a long one, and in the telling, reminded Lauren of how far she had come and how big some of the bumps along the way had truly been.

  Beth listened and asked questions—some very pointed, and some truly obscure. And all of them exceedingly calm for a woman who had last been seen rocking in a corner.

  Liriel slid quietly into the room, set down a tray, and joined Beth on the couch. Wariness still lived in her eyes, but they’d warmed up several degrees from the encounter at the front door. She held out a plate. “Slightly stale chocolate chip cookies or a protein bar—Beth’s recipe. Take your pick.”

  The astute and tricky diplomat was back. Lauren looked at the plate for a moment and then took one of each.

  This time, the amusement reached Liriel’s eyes. She turned to her partner. “What have you learned?”

  Beth reached for a protein bar. “That you were right. Witch Central is arrogant when it comes to witches outside their borders.”

  Lauren winced—there were reasons for the arrogance, but it wasn’t an entirely inaccurate summary. She juggled the slightly stale cookie, looking again for words that might begin to right the missteps.

  Beth held up a hand, not finished yet. “And that they live with deeper magic than we’ve ever dreamed of, and perhaps that means the rules are more complicated.”

  Something dark and tangled hit Liriel’s eyes. And her mind barriers slammed shut with an efficient competence that had Lauren blinking.

  Lauren tried to move forward. Carefully. “The wisest witch I know says that ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’ Witch Central has a lot of magic within their reach. Sometimes it can be very difficult to know where responsibility ends and arrogance begins.”

  The two women on the couch considered her words carefully, their fingers linked together in a way that made Lauren miss her California beach knight very much. It was Beth who finally nodded. “We also believe in responsibility.”

  Liriel’s smile was strangely sad. “And we know something of spells gone awry.”

  It was forgiveness they offered—and it made Lauren feel about two inches tall.

  We are witches, came Liriel’s drifting reply. An accidental send, but an important one.

  Yes, you are. Lauren sent back a simple acknowledgement—and hoped it carried her respect.

  You heard that? Liriel’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline.

  Yes. Lauren reached out, not at all sure of the gray-eyed mind witch’s talents. There hadn’t been a whole lot of time to figure it out earlier. You’re an empath, correct? Can you not mindspeak?

  No. The reply was fast and certain—and a little bit awed. I assume you’re assisting me again.

  Only lightly. Lauren stretched a little further, but Liriel’s power flows didn’t have the staccato undertones she associated with a mindspeaker. I am. But you’re making it easy. You have nice training.

  We are not quite as incompetent as you imagined us. And we have a very curious audience.

  Lauren stopped her wincing long enough to pay attention to the third woman in the room, who was watching their silent interplay with great interest.

  Liriel reached for her partner’s hand again. “She can speak to my mind and assist me to speak to hers.”

  “Fascinating.” Beth studied the two of them for a long moment. “I expect that’s very convenient when you have things to say that you don’t want someone to hear.”

  Lauren half rose in embarrassed protest—and then realized the words were meant at face value. Nothing more, nothing less. A statement, not an accusation.

  And a true one.

  Good. Liriel seemed impressed. You read her quite well. She usually means exactly what she says, unlike the rest of us.

  “So much power,” said Beth quietly. “If I came to California, would they train me?”

  “Yes.” And if Lauren was here as Witch Central’s representative, the new level of respect could begin right now. “You know how to work hard and you’re open to new ideas. We’d be honored to have you.”

  Liriel’s tea cup seemed to approve.

  “I don’t know. It’s our busiest time of year at the shop.” Beth’s finger traced the top edge of her far-more-sturdy mug. Weighing. Thinking.

  “The shop will be fine.”

  There was a note of something odd in Liriel’s voice. Lauren frowned, trying to tease it out. You won’
t be coming?

  No. Sent with finality. If I do, you will use me as an intermediary, much as you are doing now.

  Lauren squirmed for the umpteenth time. These aren’t ideal circumstances.

  No, they aren’t. Liriel’s mental voice gentled. But it’s better if you get to know Beth on her terms. She’s an amazing woman—it would be worth your time.

  Part request and part command. Lauren nodded. It was the least they could do. We’ll do our best to make a better second impression.

  Liriel’s eyes were quiet, but her mind held steel. See that you do.

  -o0o-

  There were no words for this day. As their guest stood, preparing to leave, Beth tried to find something to say and failed.

  “You’ll have more questions.” In an eerie copy of Jamie’s behavior twenty months in the past, Lauren reached out a business card. “When you do, this is where you can find me.”

  Lauren stood and walked toward the hall. When she reached the doorway of Beth and Liri’s living room, she turned. “And when you’re ready, there are nice, normal planes that will fly you to Berkeley.”

  Then she was gone. And all that was left was the nausea in Beth’s stomach—and a lukewarm glass of eggnog in her right hand. She’d been carrying it with her, room to room, an oddly comforting touchstone.

  Eggnog meant she wasn’t insane.

  Beth touched the glass and looked over at Liri. “I’m okay now. Thank you.” It didn’t seem like enough words.

  The pillow in her partner’s hands hit the wall. “Such arrogance they have. This is twice now they’ve walked in, torn your world into shreds, and left, assuming you will follow.”

  Beth tried to find all the important pieces in what Liri was saying. Anger always made things more complicated. More tangled. “It’s our world. Not just mine.”

  A sad smile said she’d found a tangled bit that mattered. “Yes, it’s ours. But it’s you who needs what they have.”

  Someone able to match her power. To train it.

  And because of that, Liri would throw pillows, but she would not shut doors. Beth closed her eyes, very aware of just how well she was loved. “The witch needs what they have. The woman is very happy here.”