An Imperfect Witch

An Imperfect Witch

by Debora Geary

Copyright 2013 Debora Geary

Fireweed Publishing Ltd

Kindle Edition

Dedication

To the tree

who helped this tumbleweed

find her garden.

Prologue

The crystal ball shifted, uncomfortable in its cranky old age.  It had been enjoying retirement in its dim corner.

The seeking forces insisted. 
AWAKEN.

Awake, dammit.
 Foolish energies, always bound and determined to interrupt sleep and peace and everything else the orb had ever desired. 

The forces didn’t waver.

And the orb had no choice.  Born in magic—and apparently destined to die that way, too.  It tried to offer one final protest. 
The new one—she doesn’t like to listen.

Once, in the dawn of the ages of orbs and magics, the crystal ball had been revered.  Honored.  Consulted by those of powers waxing and waning.  Then had come the long silence, punctuated only by the occasional feelings of movement and light, and the even less-frequent proddings of minds unable to hear.

Foolish humans.

And then one had come.  One whose mind thrummed with awareness of the forces—and utter disdain for them.

TRY HARDER.

The orb snorted.  Clearly the forces hadn’t talked to very many witches recently.

The push from the energies only increased.

No sense of humor, either.  The orb sighed—and began the ridiculous antics necessary to capture the attention of the only one able to listen.

Chapter 1

If you were going to totally embarrass yourself, it was better to do it alone.

Lizard Monroe shooed her boss out the door of Berkeley Realty and locked it, feeling foolish.  It was no big deal.  Just a stupid letter.  And there were any number of people in her life who would be all happy and shit if she let them.

Not this evening.

With a final surreptitious glance at the door, she headed to the back room—the place where files went to die and no one would look for a hot up-and-coming young realtor on a Friday night.  She grabbed her red leather backpack and slid down the wall, feeling like the abrasive delinquent she’d once been.

Two years, four months, twenty-three days—a lifetime and a hiccup.

Big emotions churned up Lizard’s throat and back down again.  Old ones—shame and inadequacy, guilt for the past and guilt for escaping it.  And the even harder ones to admit.  Victory.  Pride.

This was why she needed to be alone.  For the next few minutes, she was going to be one very messed-up Lizard.

Ignoring the shaking of her fingers, she reached into her backpack for the letter.  A totally innocuous white envelope—until you saw the return address. 
California Department of Corrections.  Region II Parole Headquarters.

The place where stupid punk twenty-one-year-olds nobody cared about went to die.

Okay, that was probably a little extreme.  Lizard fingered the envelope.  Twenty-six months ago, the Department of Corrections had been threatening her with a lot more than parole.

And then she’d fallen into Witch Central—a big, happy collection of people with magic and those who loved them.  They’d taken her in, mindreading powers, petty crimes, bad attitude, and all.  And in between cookiefests and water fights, insisted that she find a better path.

Reason number two she needed to be alone.  She still hadn’t figured out how to say thank you.  Her life was way damn better than Lizard Monroe had ever expected or deserved.  A great job, a sexy and astonishing guy, and an obnoxiously loyal clan. 

The letter wouldn’t change any of that.  But Lizard had known the moment she’d spied it in her mailbox that it was going to change her.  Words in writing always managed to do that somehow.

Unsettled and annoyed, she slid a finger under the flap.

The single sheet of paper inside was impersonal, printed out by some machine that could care less that she’d hijacked a car.  Or that she’d tried to bring it back after one really awesome fast joyride along the coast.

Joy always had a price.

Or it had, until she’d fallen in with people who served it up on waffles for breakfast.

She read the words. 
Effective October 27, 2013, let it be known that Elizabeth Eleanor Monroe has hereby met all conditions of parole as specified by the court in reference to case #32531257, and is no longer required to comply with relevant sections of the California Penal Code.

There was more.  A dry list of things she was no longer required to do.  And then a spark of life.  Three short lines at the end, right above the signature of the man she’d met only once.

Haven’t seen much of you.  Keep it that way.  Best of luck to you.

She tried to imagine him sitting at a desk, coffee stains gathering on the paperwork of the latest poor schmuck assigned to his caseload, typing the words by rote into a letter he’d seen a thousand times. 

And couldn’t quite get there.  He hadn’t been an awful guy.  Maybe he actually meant it. 

And he needn’t fear.  If she attempted a detour back to that life, there would be a lot more than one overworked parole officer standing in her way.

She closed her eyes for a minute, in this space of quiet, and let herself simply sink into the life that was hers now.  The last time she’d been this happy, she’d been nine, Gram had still been alive, and the world hadn’t yet shown her how mean it could be.

She opened her eyes and read the letter one more time.  Not really news—more like an epitaph.  For the misguided delinquent named after royalty and the wives of presidents.

People kept asking her what came next.  When you were Lizard Monroe, the present was a freaking miracle.  Yesterday and tomorrow were bridges she had no intention of crossing.

She scrunched the letter into a ball and shoved it in her backpack.  Time to go.  The present was calling, in the form of a date with a trio of four-foot-tall hellions.

None of whom would ever end up as a case number on a parole officer’s desk.

-o0o-

Coffee, ice cream, dinner.  In exactly that order.

Lauren slid onto the couch next to her somnolent husband, very ready to join him in lazy slothfulness.  It had been a seriously long week at the office.  October was supposed to be dead in real estate, but apparently no one had informed the flood of cheerful house hunters who had been streaming in the doors of Berkeley Realty.

Devin peeled open one eye.  “Well hello, sexy.”

Almost two years of married bliss and lines like that mostly made her snort.   “That’s not on the agenda until
after
dinner.”

The slow grin that traveled across his face could easily have convinced her otherwise.  “Need your other fixes first, do you?”

And how.  The last client of the day had been unrelentingly chirpy.  “What’s the latest from the family gossip pipeline?”  She needed something to wash away the memories of squeaky joy over every last antique doorknob and uncracked fireplace tile.  Sullivan family antics were always good for a distraction.

“The triplets have some ideas for your Halloween costume, Jamie wants to know if you can do a magic lesson after lunch tomorrow, and Fuzzball here might be turning into a teenager.  He’s gone nocturnal.”

She reached over and scratched behind the ears of the cat sleeping on her husband’s chest.  He hadn’t been nearly so dopey in the wee hours of the full moon.  “Aftereffects of your sleep spell, maybe.”  The consequences of attacking a snoring witch’s toes in the middle of the night.

Dev looked vaguely embarrassed.  “Nope.  Found a really wilted plant on the bench at the foot of the bed this morning.  The sleep spell missed.”

She tried not to laugh—really, she did—and then gave up.  So much better than doorknobs. 

Her husband only rolled his eyes and ruffled the unruly fur on the cat’s head.

Her silly dudes.  Lauren watched them fondly, mentally backtracking to the other items in Devin’s update.  Magic lessons with Aervyn were always fun, and six-year-olds never chirped about architectural features.  The Halloween costume was a bigger problem.  “Tell your nieces I got boots today.”  Ridiculous and black, as ordered.  “But I’m not wearing a pink wig.”

“Nuh, uh—you tell them.”  Her husband grinned.  “They’re your nieces too.  And I think you’d look sexy in pink.”

Three dictators with curls is what they were.  “I don’t think sexy is what they’re aiming at.”

He winced as a crackling sound hit the room and Fuzzball dug every last claw into his chest.  “Oh, and your crystal ball’s been doing its thing again.”

Lauren couldn’t decide what or who to glare at first.  She shot Dev an exasperated look and then aimed a scathing glance at the now-silent white orb sitting on a stand in the corner.  Stupid temperamental thing.  Modern witches didn’t do business with hocus-pocus.

Unless they’d inherited it from a grandmotherly Irish witch who pretty much insisted.

“It crackled every fifteen minutes or so all morning.”  Dev sounded unconcerned.  “Fuzzball hissed at it after lunch and it went back to sleep.”

Lauren looked at the cat, already off in feline dreamland, with new appreciation. 

And then the hissing started.

The orb—sitting in its corner doing a damn impressive imitation of an annoyed cat.  Fuzzball took one look and hightailed it under the couch.

Lucky kitty.  Lauren looked at the crystal ball, lines of white light sizzling on its surface, and decided her hopes for a quiet evening with Ben and Jerry had just gone out the window.

Devin’s hand stroked her back.  “Go talk to the darn thing and get it over with.”  He, better than anyone, understood how much she treasured Moira’s gift—and how much she hated that it occasionally worked.

Futures weren’t meant to be seen.

She got up and headed in the direction of the glass ball.  If past experience was any predictor, it would only keep crackling and getting more annoying until she paid it some attention, and the last thing they needed was it learning any more new tricks.  “Okay, but if it doesn’t predict gobs of chocolate in my immediate future, I’m tossing it into the Marianas Trench.”