Witches in Flight (5 page)

Fascination.

Lauren wondered if Lizard would be able to be honest.
 
And then she remembered the far more
pertinent issue with this particular picture—right before her assistant’s
mind froze.

Lizard looked at the screen for a very long time, mind barriers
down as tight as Lauren had ever felt them.
 
When she spoke, the words were strung steel.
 
“Who invited him?”

Oh, hell.
 
“I did.”

Lizard stared another long moment—and then she turned to
Lauren and let her barriers down, just a fraction.
 
Just enough for a sliver of gratitude to leak.
 
“That was pretty badass.”

Now it was Lauren facing Kryptonite.
 
Where was the delinquent storm?
 
The infuriated assistant on a rampage?
 
“I probably shouldn’t have done it.”

Lizard snorted.
 
“Why is it that everyone at Witch Central only says that
after
they’ve caused trouble?”

This conversation wasn’t going in any of the expected
directions.
 
Lauren was tempted to
dive for cover just on principle.
 
“Why aren’t you mad?”

“Oh, I am.”
 
Lizard’s lips twitched.
 
“But stomping around this office would just be stupid, and I don’t get
to do stupid just because I feel like it anymore.”
 

She reached for the mouse and flipped to the picture of Freddie,
studiously avoiding Lauren’s eyes.
 
“He’s the first reason stupid had to go—but you’re the
second.
 
You gave me something
important here, something that says ‘not stupid’ every day.
 
You earned the right to mess with my
life.
 
Once.
”
 
She took a deep
breath and stood up.
 
“I’ll go get
the paperwork ready for the Madisons.”

Lauren watched her assistant’s retreating back,
bewildered—and totally impressed.
 
Both messages received, loud and clear.
 

Those must have been some soufflés.

~ ~ ~

Elsie opened the door to Spirit Yoga and heard the quiet notes
of one of Nat’s favorite tracks for shavasana, the quiet, prone meditation at
the end of class.
 
Excellent—she
had about ten minutes.
 
That should
be long enough to figure out if this was a good idea or not.

For maybe the first time ever, she hadn’t tried to work out the
entire answer in her head before taking action.
 
Nat had sent her away—and it might be time to come
back, but she wasn’t going to know for sure until she slid back into the role
of yoga intern and saw how it felt.
 

Elsie looked around—and spied the laundry basket, full of
clean towels, sitting behind the counter.
 
Perfect.
 
She slid off her
sandals and walked around to her old, familiar station, trying to stay open to
how it felt.
 
She remembered all
too well how it
used to
feel, the dragging weight of boredom and
obligation.
 
The towels hadn’t
changed—but perhaps she had.

The towels were still warm.
 
And the little burst of pleasure she got sinking her fingers
into their languid fuzziness charmed her.
 
A moment of comfort.
 
Echoes
of childhood memory, perhaps, or the hint of safe haven in the everyday.

She grinned.
 
Waxing
philosophical about towels was definitely new.

Fingers enjoying the sensations, ears tuned to the lilting notes
drifting from the studio, Elsie began to fold.
 
She’d emptied half the basket, enjoying the ritual of the
ordinary, before she really looked at the growing pile beside her—and had
to giggle.
 
It looked like Aervyn
had done the folding.
 

With one hand, she gently pushed the pile back into her basket,
curious.
 
Yoga positions had some
very clear forms, and Nat taught that freedom came from the precision of good
alignment.
 
Could towel folding be
mindful and neat and not become drudgery?

Moving with her breath, she spread a towel out on the counter,
lifting one half up and folding it down on the other.
 
Her fingers missed the just-out-of-the-dryer warmth, so she
leaked a light touch of magic, smiling as the fabric cozied under her hands
again.
 
Just like warming a
soufflé.

And then a new thought whispered, and she grinned,
enchanted.
 
Towel folding had
definitely changed.

She worked through her pile, reaching for the last towel just as
the music died away.
 
Perfect
timing—her spellwork probably wouldn’t last very long.

Elsie scooped up her neat stack and went to stand by the
door.
 
When the first student
exited, she dropped a towel in his hands, delighted as he brought the soft
fabric to his cheek.

The next student took a towel—and then stopped, a smile
blooming on her face.
 
“It’s
warm.”
 
She buried her fingers and
nodded.
 
“Thanks.”

Ten students.
 
Ten
towels—and ten small moments of grace.
 

Elsie was nearly in tears by the time Nat emerged.
 
She offered up the last towel, knowing
the magic waned, even now.
 
She’d
have to find a witch with better spell longevity and get a lesson.

Nat reached for the towel, face welcoming and slightly confused.
 
When her fingers touched warmth, the
bewilderment grew.
 
Wordless, she
glanced around at her class, a few towels still being cuddled, some making
their way to the dirty laundry basket.
 
Ever so slowly, comprehension dawned on her face.

Then she looked at Elsie, eyes bright, and held out her
arms.
 
“Welcome back.”

Professor Allard had the kind of look in his eye that had Lizard
squirming before she even got into her seat.
 
And unfortunately, in a class of eight people, there weren’t
very many places to hide.

She was feeling delinquent this morning, and wearing the torn
jeans to prove it.
 
Given what she
expected to happen, that wasn’t stupid—it was an act of self-defense.

Jeremy, on the other side of the table, gave her a quick thumbs-up
and slid his glasses back on his head—a total sign of nerves.
 
Lori, sitting beside him, looked as
sick as Lizard felt.
 
Huh.
 
Apparently nobody was looking forward
to their poetry going under the bright lights of the advanced poetry seminar
microscope.

At least the Starry Plough had been dark.

The guy in charge cleared his throat.
 
“You can all relax.
 
What happens at Poetry Slam stays there.”

Jeremy frowned.
 
“You aren’t going to say anything?”

“Only this.”
 
Professor Allard pinned the three of them down with a glance.
 
“It takes guts and a bizarre kind of
bravery to empty your soul out on a stage.
 
Some people do it and their poetry totally sucks, but that
doesn’t take away one nano-weight from their guts.
 
Sometimes the poetry is sublime.”

He looked at each of the three of them in turn.
 
And then flashed a grin.
 
“Yours didn’t suck.”

Lizard felt relief whooshing through the two across the
table—and realized that she cared much less than they did.
 
Her team of judges had already
ruled.
 

And her poetry had never sucked—that much, she also
knew.
 
Admitting it in public was a
totally different thing from what you knew inside your soul.
 
The words had always come to her, and
she had always known they were right.

Jeremy shrugged and wrapped his arm around Lori’s
shoulders.
 
“It was her poem.”

“No.”
 
Professor
Allard shook his head.
 
“In the
most obvious answer, your art made her words live, and that makes it yours,
too.”
 
He looked at Lizard.
 
“But I think you know why Lori’s poem
isn’t just hers anymore.
 
And why
yours isn’t only yours.”

She did.
 
It was
exactly why she’d always kept her words tucked away in a dark corner of her
head.
 
But there was no freaking
way she was going to spout mystical crap to a bunch of brainiacs.

She sat in silence, watching eight sets of eyes stare at
hers.
 
Some curious.
 
The professor’s more demanding.
 
And Lori’s, almost pleading.

Frack.
 
She was
turning into a total wimp lately.
 
“It also belongs to the audience.”

Professor Allard’s eyes were still demanding.
 
Most of the rest were fairly
confused.
 
Apparently braniacs
sometimes needed a personal tour.
 
“Words start as ours.
 
Until
we say them or write them, they’re just in this little bubble inside our heads,
and they mean exactly what we meant them to say because we’re the only
audience.”

She turned to Lori, blocking out all the other eyes.
 
“But if we put them out there, words
speak to things inside people, things we don’t even know about.
 
You talked about being new—new in
this country, new in this culture.”
 
She shrugged.
 
“That’s no
big for me—I’ve always been here.
 
But I’m kind of new to the whole grown-up thing, so that’s what I heard
in your words.
 
So now they’re a
little bit my words too, and they don’t only mean what they meant when you
wrote them.”

And wow, that was an arrogant thing to say, even if she was
totally right.
 
Someday she was
going to find a leash for her mouth.

Lori’s grin was a bit wavery.
 
“Do you want to know what I heard in your words?”

No.
 
A thousand
times no.
 
But that wasn’t how
grown-ups did business.
 
“I guess.”

“I heard that you don’t win a fight by surviving.
 
You win it by changing the rules, by
being smart and being brave enough to look past what you always thought was
true.
 
You win by knowing the truth
matters, and it’s the truth inside you that matters most.”

Lizard tried desperately to squirm in some direction that
wouldn’t make her look into the mirror her new friend was holding up.
 
Dammit, this was exactly what she’d
expected to happen when she’d come to class.
 
She glared at Professor Allard, purveyor of broken
promises.
 
He just winked and
grinned.

Lori looked down at the table, cheeks flushing.
 
“Anyhow, that’s what I heard.”

Lizard yanked down her mind barriers as murmurs of agreement,
said and unsaid, started floating around the room.
 
“Don’t we have some dead-poet dude to talk about?”

“In a moment.”
 
Her
professor’s eyes had that look again.
 
“But I’m going to break my own rule first.
 
You told us ‘stupid’ wasn’t a name anymore.
 
Just a word.”

Triple fracking hell.
 
She wanted to move back to the planet where nobody paid any attention to
the words coming out of Lizard Monroe’s mouth.
 
“Yeah.
 
So?”