Witches Under Way (18 page)

They heard Lizard coming from halfway down the block.  Lauren grinned at Jennie.  “Wow, Josh must have really pushed her buttons.”

Jennie leaned back into her chair, looking intrigued.  “I think I have to meet this boy.”

He was young, but he was no boy.  Lauren kept her mouth shut, however—Jennie was more than capable of figuring that out for herself.  And Lizard’s mind was spewing a lot of snippets that didn’t seem all that related to Josh.

Interesting.

She blew through the door, looking monstrously frazzled.  “Lauren.  How do most real estate agents come up with a shortlist of houses for clients?”  She skidded to a halt in front of the desk.  “Hey, Jennie.”

Lauren blinked, trying to hop aboard a conversational tornado.  “Most agents, or this office?”

“Most.”  Lizard sat down, but her mind was bouncing like a fish tank full of Superballs.

“Well, any decent agent gets a sense of what the client wants in a house and tries to match that to available listings.”  Which was hardly news to her assistant, but a good negotiator knew when to bide her time.  Something big was on Lizard’s mind.

“The house, right?  But not the neighborhood.”

Ah.  This had something to do with the maps.  Clearly Josh wasn’t moving slowly.  “Well, good agents have a feel for the areas they typically sell in, and you try to match that up with a client—but it’s more art than science.  Partly it’s because good information isn’t as available—that’s why those maps of yours are so useful.”

Lizard nodded, still distracted by the thoughts firing around her brain.  “That’s what Josh said.”  She looked up, eyes suddenly clearing.  “But the idea to pay attention to the neighborhoods is yours.  I just did the maps.”

Okay, she was falling behind again.  Lauren studied her assistant, trying to gauge where this was going.

She’s trying to worm out of owning her genius,
sent Jennie quietly.
 She can do that if you let her be just the data flunkie.

It was always good to have backup.  Lauren kept her voice casual.  “It’s not a new idea.  Any good realtor knows clients buy into a whole package—the house, the neighbors, the cute little shop or park down the street.  But those things are really variable, so they’re hard to put on a listing sheet.  It’s easier to focus on bedroom closets and whether the kitchen has nice appliances or not.”

“So most real estate agents don’t really focus on the neighborhood.”

Lauren’s inner negotiator could smell the deal now.  “They might.  If they had the right tools.”

Lizard glared, suddenly radiating suspicion.  “Have you been talking to Josh?”

Bull’s-eye.  “No, but you have.  Are you going to tell us what you talked about, or are we going to keep playing Realtor Twenty Questions?”

Her assistant scowled.  “He wants to make a fancy version of my maps and sell it to real estate agents across the country.  Make all the data automated and stuff.”

That much, Lauren knew.  “How do you feel about that?”

Lizard shrugged.  “Less work for me, I guess.”

Murky territory again.  “It wouldn’t be as good as your maps.  You walk around the neighborhood, get a hands-on feel.  Databases can’t substitute for eyes on the ground.”

“That’s what I told Josh.”  Lizard’s eyes lit.  “We need to hire people to go walk around the neighborhoods.  Take notes.”

Jennie’s eyebrows flew up.  “That’s not exactly a small undertaking.  Or a cheap one.”

The jumble in Lizard’s mind multiplied tenfold, all underlaid with a thick coating of doubt.  “He says he knows investors.  Suits with lots of money and no ideas of their own.  He thinks they might be interested in the prototype.”

In a parallel universe, Lauren might be keeping up with this conversation.  “What prototype?”

“Josh and a couple people he works with jazzed up my maps.  We talked about a few more ideas to add, and then he wants to show them to some people.”  Lizard suddenly looked kind of green.  “He wants me to meet with them too.”

Lauren tried not to laugh, imagining the culture shock that might happen if Lizard ended up on the other side of the table from the no-ideas-of-their-own guys.  And then realized that was exactly the thing terrifying her assistant, in the short intervals when doubt wasn’t in control.  Well, this much, she could help with.  “Just pretend they’re naked.”

Jennie nearly snorted tea out her nose, and tried to cover by being helpful.  “Or covered in tattoos.”

Lizard stared—and then her lips started to quirk.  “Do I get to design the tats?”

“Absolutely.”  Jennie smiled.  And sent a tightly channeled message to Lauren. 
Keep me posted.  I might know an investor or two who don’t wear suits, if this is for real.

Lauren hid her smile.  Josh was for real, and she was pretty sure she could name a couple of Jennie’s investors.  It had been a total shock to discover how much money ran quietly underground in Witch Central, and a good deal of it ran through her best friend’s husband.  And there was no chance Jamie would show up wearing a suit.

Lizard jumped as her phone beeped.  “Crap, gotta go.  Class starts in fifteen.”  She was already on the move.  “I’ll be in at eight tomorrow.  Is it okay if I leave early for my new poetry class?”

Since she didn’t wait around to hear the answer, Lauren figured the question was mostly rhetorical. 

Jennie smiled.  “That was interesting.”

“Yeah.”  Lauren grinned.  “Do you think Josh is ready for a bunch of witch investors?”

“Hmmm.”  Jennie’s eyes were pensive.  “I’m more interested in whether Lizard’s ready for Josh.”

She wasn’t the only one. 

~ ~ ~

Elsie reached up and ran a hand through her hair, pretty sure she still felt sand.  That probably wasn’t a huge surprise—even her eyebrows had been caked with sand by the time she and Aervyn had finished blowing up every volcano in his imaginary universe.

Running through the sprinkler afterwards had been fun, but it had mostly just spread the sand around to new places.  Perhaps she should have taken Nell up on the de-sanding spell.  It was apparently a pretty easy spell for an earth witch—and that troubled Elsie.  She had minor earth talents.  Why didn’t she know how to clean herself up when she got messy?

She walked slowly down the sidewalk, knowing the truth, and hating it.  Because she’d never gotten messy.  And now she was an adult with some huge, gaping holes in her life because she’d skipped way too many of the fun and silly parts.

She’d worked with an awful lot of clients who had blamed their parents for their troubles, and never truly understood it.  But if a ten-year-old girl didn’t know how to be silly, how could that not be her mother’s fault?

Yes.  She was angry with her mother.  Scratch that.  She was furious with her mother.  And all the therapy degrees in the world weren’t helping her calm down.

It was easy enough to follow the pretty classic lines of what had happened.  A father abandons his wife and child.  The wife, distraught, works to remove any reminders of the father from her life—including those that lived in her daughter’s personality.  Papa had been a painter, a sculptor, an artist.  Messy and silly had been his stock-in-trade. 

And after he’d left, guided by her mother’s sadness, Elsie had divested herself of the bits of her soul most like her father.  It had been a willing transformation—Mom wasn’t the only one who had been abandoned.

Fast forward to adulthood, and you ended up with a woman who needed a remedial education in how to have fun.

Elsie stopped on the edge of a playground, watching a toddler throw sand with one hand and eat some mushy lump of gluck with the other.  An older child balanced precariously on a skateboard, tongue sticking out in lopsided concentration.  Further away, a group of giggly teenage girls stood watching a couple of shirtless boys throwing balls at a hoop.

Oh, God, thought Elsie.  Silly wasn’t restricted to kids under six.  She’d done well enough with Aervyn, learning the fine art of making mud pies.  But nine and ten and sixteen-year-olds did three lifetimes full of things she’d never tried.

How did you catch up on more than twenty years of being the responsible, obsessively neat child who didn’t have any fun?  Preferably without breaking any bones or getting arrested.

There were so many ways this could go badly.  But she had to try.

She’d worked too hard finding this hole to refuse to fill it.

~ ~ ~

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To:
[email protected]

From: Vero Liantro <
[email protected]
>

Subject: Re: Two happy hearts.

––––––––––––––

Jennie love,

Melvin has often said that Aervyn’s greatest talent is his capacity for joy.  To that I would add his ability to be the engine of much of the silliness of Witch Central.  It’s a delightful sign that Elsie is ready for his particular brand of magic.  And if I recall correctly, blowing up a mud volcano is a pretty bit of spellwork as well.

I imagine that your hands itched for a camera—and I admit to a bit of a wish that you’d had one.  Few things make for a sweeter picture than small, dirty boys and a good dose of joy.

I assume Lizard has returned by now—Melvin’s pendant gives no indication that she’s gone AWOL.  And while I know nothing of this Josh, I know all too well how dangerous a nice man who suddenly gets demanding can be.  My Melvin had me fooled for a while—that quiet accountant exterior of his is quite the disguise.

I find myself thinking that it might be an interesting journey for our Lizard to meet her Melvin.  And then I laugh at myself for being a matchmaking old lady.  She has plenty of time to find her own heart yet.

Although Josh might not think so.  I know young people meet and part a lot these days, but we opera singers believe in grand loves.  I’ll indulge myself in a little daydreaming on Lizard’s behalf.  Reality might choose a far different path.

Walk in the light,

Vero

~ ~ ~

The house smelled insanely good.  Lizard paused at the door, stomach ready to riot.  It was Elsie’s night to cook dinner—and nothing in Elsie’s repertoire came remotely close to smelling like heaven.

Lizard reached out with a mindscan, checking for house invaders.

Welcome home,
sent Jamie, mentally chuckling. 
We’re having a cooking lesson back here, and we’ve cleaned up most of the mess—I think it’s safe to enter.

Ha.  They were still cleaning up flour out of kitchen crannies after the bake-Helga-a-rock-resembling-a-cake disaster. 
Are you a better cook than Jennie?

Laughter rumbled from Jamie’s head. 
On most things, yeah.  More importantly, I know my limitations.  We’re making tomato sauce.

That got Lizard’s feet moving toward the kitchen.  Fast.  Jamie’s tomato sauce had a street value higher than crack.  She dropped her bag on the counter and kept moving, nose headed straight for the pot on the stove in front of Elsie.  “How’d you get him to teach you his secret sauce?”  She’d heard people had tried to bribe him for like two decades. 

Elsie just grunted and squinted at the sauce.

Lizard spun around to face Jamie, glaring.  “I even offered to trade my biscuit recipe.  What’d she give you?”

Jamie grinned, draining pasta over the sink.  “She babysat Aervyn for me today.”

Unless superboy had turned her roommate into a frog or something, that was the most pathetic trade ever.  Lizard’s bullshit detector started beeping insanely. 
No way.  What’s the real deal?

That’s it.
 Jamie poured noodles onto a big flat plate. 
She’s only a baby negotiator, and she really wanted to learn how to cook something that uses earth magic.  My repertoire’s kind of limited, and she asked nicely, so we’re making sauce.

Lizard frowned and asked something that had bothered her for weeks. 
She’s an earth witch.  Aren’t they born good at cooking?

Yeah.
 Jamie met her gaze. 
Some of us don’t manage to use everything we’re born with.

She had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling they weren’t talking about Elsie anymore.

Elsie spun around, victory blazing on her face.  “Green stuff.  It needs some of that green stuff.  You know, the one with the little pointy things and the smell.”

Lizard blinked.  “That doesn’t exactly narrow it down a lot.”  About half the kitchen herbs in the universe met that description.

Try grabbing the picture from her mind,
said Jamie dryly. 
It’s a little more precise.

Ah.  Rosemary.  Lizard turned around, following her nose, and discovered about fifteen plates of chopped, mashed, and shredded herbs.  “Whoa.  You guys put all this in the sauce?”

Jamie grinned.  “Nope.  That’s just the range of possibilities.  Elsie’s been picking and choosing.”

Normally that would have had Lizard running in terror, but she couldn’t deny the wondrous smell emanating from the pot.  Gingerly, she handed over a plate of lightly crushed rosemary, and watched, fascinated, as Elsie ran her finger through the herb.  “What are you doing?”

“Trying to hear what it’s saying.”  Elsie leaned her nose closer to the plate, and then looked at Jamie, uncertain.  “A little more?”

He shrugged.  “Is that what it’s telling you?”

Get out,
Lizard sent, smart enough not to disrupt her roommate’s concentration. 
Herbs talk?

Kinda.
  Jamie reached up for wine glasses.
 It’s not much different than kneading bread dough—how do you know when you have enough flour?

It sure as heck didn’t have a conversation with her. 
I just know.  When it feels right.

He nodded and poured. 
It’s kind of like that for an earth witch, but with a little extra punch.  And they don’t have to have done it ten times to have those good instincts.

Well, that was freaking convenient. 

Jamie rolled his eyes. 
She’s cooking you a bad-ass dinner—are you really complaining?