Witches in flight, p.5
Witches in Flight, page 5
He grinned. “We have a version-one web interface ready. Totally alpha, but Danny’d appreciate if you use it some, let him know where the bugs are.”
What, he was reading minds today? “Is that why you’re skulking outside my class—Danny can’t find his email send button?”
He stood up to walk with her, ignoring the pointed lack of invitation. “Nope. But since I’m here, I figured I could deliver the message. Got another one, too—the meeting with the suits is set up for Thursday, 10 a.m.”
There had to be something on her schedule then. “I’ll let you know if I can make it. Might be busy.”
“It’s one of the open windows you gave me.” His voice was still casual, but his mind was coiled and a little annoyed. “I’ve got ten busy businesspeople all organized to show up, so it would be handy if you could make it.”
Lizard debated. Hard. And then decided it was probably time to grow up and stop making his life difficult just because he tangled her insides. This was business, not personal—and it wasn’t his fault her insides still got stupid sometimes. “Fine, I’ll be there.” A terrible thought occurred to her. “Do I have to wear a suit?”
The picture of her in a suit—a really sexy red one—that flashed through his mind was totally unnerving. He grinned and angled left onto the sidewalk. “Nah. They expect somebody to look like a grown-up, but that’s my job. Everyone else just has to sound smart. Danny will likely be in ratty jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt, so you’ll have to work at it some if you want to be the most underdressed person in the room.”
Dammit, he was laughing at her. Inside his head, but still. And they were almost at the Patty Shack, which meant he was steering her in more ways than one. Growing up had its limits. “Are you done with all your messages now?” She shifted her monster backpack between them, attempting to roadblock his herding efforts. “And I don’t have time for food.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, backpack and all, a casual and very effective vise. “We’ll get takeout and go to your office. I’ll show you the new web interface and then leave you to slave over your maps in peace. You want one patty or two?”
Resistance was futile, especially now that she could smell burger fumes. Her stomach, always the traitor. “Two. And you could just email me the web thing. I’ll figure it out.”
“I could.” He grinned and placed his order. “But I’m not quite done with you yet.”
Lizard answered the Patty Shack guy on autopilot. Josh’s mind had suddenly shrouded in a way that made the discomfort in her belly breed like bunnies. A mind probe got her nowhere, and digging any deeper was the kind of thing that would probably make Grammie smite her from heaven.
He took her hand and headed over to the waiting area, out of the way of the main line. And then made her squirm in silence as he chatted casually with some cute kid who apparently lived down the street. An old lady walked by and beamed at them.
It wasn’t what it looked like. Panic inched up Lizard’s throat. She grabbed their separately bagged orders and shoved one in Josh’s hands. Maybe she could ditch him on the cute kid. “Gotta go—email me the link.”
He exchanged some kind of secret-code handshake with the kid and caught up to her in two strides. “I’m starving. You got any ketchup at the office?”
Screw this. She stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and nailed him with her best badass stare. “What do you want, Josh?”
His eyes suddenly did something she’d never seen before—they looked uncertain. “I was going to leave this for later, so that business and personal stuff didn’t get tangled. But that’s bullshit, because they’re already all mixed up.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Come to the beach with me tonight. I’ll bring some music, we can have a fire, talk a little.”
There was no mistaking what he meant. The words might have left some room for waffling. His mind was entirely clear. Lizard felt something inside start to bleed. “You mean like a date?”
“Yeah.”
She clutched her burger bag, suddenly very unhungry—and prayed for the words to lift her out of hell. “I can’t. You’re my client.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a statute of limitations on that stuff.” He turned to walk again, heading toward her office. “But we’re probably getting hooked up again work-wise with the maps, so yeah, it would be tangled.”
His eyes asked the question. Did she care?
She should. It should be a rule. A hulking big one with no get-out-of-jail-free card. It was probably in one of those stupid realtor courses she’d taken.
His fingers slid into hers. “I’d like you to come.”
Lizard tried to stay on her feet as her foundations shook. And shuddered as a tiny sliver of hope tried to run straight from his fingers into her belly.
Then she took a deep breath. Lizard Monroe wasn’t stupid anymore. “I can’t.” She squeezed his fingers once—a kind of good-bye—and then choked as insanity grabbed her throat and pushed out two more words. “Not yet.”
Her clomping steps, matched to his, were all that broke the silence. Then he squeezed her fingers back. “Okay. Let me know when you are. I’ll email you the web thing.”
She watched him stroll away down the sidewalk, mind pummeled by wordless, confused torment. And then looked down at the totally mangled burger bag in her hands.
Crap. Just. Crap.
~ ~ ~
Elsie beamed into Vero’s front hallway, holding her new guitar tightly.
“That’s a lovely instrument, my dear.” Vero emerged from the kitchen, two glasses of iced tea in her hands. “I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t.” Elsie grinned, feeling the sunbeams dancing in her belly. “Or, I didn’t. Nat wants to do a special yoga workshop and we were brainstorming and wanted some live music and she sent me off to talk to this guy she knows, who plays, but also teaches guitar, and…” She stopped, breathless, and giggled. “Sorry, I guess I’m a bit excited.”
“It’s good breath control.” Vero smiled and stepped into the music room. “Opera is often written in that state of tripping excitement. I used to think perhaps that was why the composers never gave us enough opportunities to breathe.”
It was hard to imagine Vero needing more air. Elsie was well aware she took three breaths to Vero’s one when they sang together.
Vero set down the iced tea and reached for the guitar, strumming lightly. “It has a lovely tone. You’re going to learn to play, then?” She picked out a light and simple melody.
Elsie sighed, a little jealous. It had taken her ten minutes just to learn how to finger her first chord. “I’m going to try. Hector says it won’t take long to learn to play easy accompaniments when I sing.”
“Ah.” Vero’s eyes twinkled as she handed back the guitar. “Found yourself a sexy Latin guitar teacher, have you?”
Elsie blinked. Hector was white-haired and rotund and had pictures of his family taped to the side of his guitar. “Well, he plays beautifully, but he’s married with eleven grandchildren.” She had learned most of their names.
“Old can still be sexy, my dear, but I take your point.” Vero sat down at the piano, chuckling. “In that case, let’s learn a simple melody today. I’ll write down the chord progression to take to your teacher.”
It might be fun to have sexy in her life. Elsie stroked the neck of her guitar and frowned, feeling disloyal to the warm and comfortable Hector.
“Ah, sweet girl. I didn’t mean to make you feel less than happy.” Vero stood up again and walked over to a corner closet, emerging with a guitar decked out in the sheen of age and long use. “Come sit on the couch with me, and we’ll find passion with our fingers.”
“Am I still lacking?” Elsie strode to the bay window, guitar in her arms, suddenly needing to defend her life. “I ride Gertrude Geronimo with the wind in my hair, and dance in my back yard in four-inch red heels. I fly through the sky connected to the earth only by my hands. Is passion really that absent in my life?” She was astonished to find herself pacing.
“No.” Vero paused a beat. “And yes.”
“No mysteries, please!” Elsie spun around, wondering where her happy summer afternoon had gone. “Enough witch riddles.”
Vero smiled, apparently not at all dismayed by the temper tantrum. “You have found many wonderful sources of passion in your life, my girl, and you will find many more. But for the most part, they are the pure, sweet passions of a child—to go fast, fly high, dance in the midday sun.”
“And those are wrong?” Elsie let her temper flow, even as she wondered why people always lashed out at the messenger.
“Not at all.” Vero walked the floor with her now, a circling duet of feet. “But they are the first. You’re going back, making up for lost time. But tell me—why do you dance in your red shoes? Those aren’t the shoes of a child—what pushes you then?”
A dream. Elsie stayed silent, not sure where the words had come from.
“A child lives her passions, and if she’s lucky, holds on to them her whole life.” Vero clasped Elsie’s hand briefly. “But she also grows up to be a woman, and discovers new passions, a new range of emotion and experience.”
“That sounds like riddles again.”
Vero’s chuckle rippled through the room. “Well, when I was a young woman, it involved a lot of late nights in a Paris garret.”
Elsie’s cheeks flamed. “You’re telling me to go have sex?”
Now the chuckles grew into waves of sound. “Well, that’s certainly one possibility, although it’s not the only one, even in a Paris garret.” Vero stared out the window a moment, a sure sign she was reliving some past memory. “I’m just saying that you are a grown woman, and one that has begun to tap her deeply passionate soul. Don’t be surprised if some of what comes out isn’t from the realm of young girls.”
This was beginning to rival one very uncomfortable discussion with her mother when Elsie was about fourteen. She looked down at her guitar. “Should we sing? It’s my turn to cook dinner tonight, and I’m trying something new.”
Vero reached out and ran a hand gently down Elsie’s hair. “Passion isn’t comfortable, love. But it lives in you. When it’s time, give it a chance.”
Elsie nodded. And tried not to wonder what Vero had done in Paris garrets.
Chapter 6
It was a restless night—the kind that made fire sing in Elsie’s soul.
The sort of night where she usually closed the curtains, tucked her head under the covers, and tried to get a responsible eight hours of sleep.
To hell with responsible. Something in her was itching to be free, and she had no idea what it was.
She slipped out the front door in her bare feet, and then bent down to slide on strappy sandals. There was no point waking Lizard up just because her blood was restless.
Moving faster now, Elsie strode down the walkway. She swung automatically toward Gertrude Geronimo, and then stopped—this wasn’t a night for childish pleasures. Fast hills and the wind in her hair weren’t going to cool whatever stirred inside her.
Elsie raised her fingers to the sky, collecting beams of light from the low-hanging moon. It called to her, the moon—a wordless invitation to seek whatever lay hidden in the swirling night.
It felt very much like a walk she’d taken before. Many times before. Which just wasn’t possible—Elsie Giannotto spent the hours after midnight safely in her bed. Always.
She looked around, surprised to find she’d danced her way onto one of the main streets of the Arts District. She wasn’t sure which one—they looked much different in the daylight. Warm air swirled out of open doorways, and lovers walked by on the street, eyes only for each other.
They were all lovers. No one else walked the streets alone. It was the garrets of Paris, poured out onto the streets of Berkeley.
Loneliness, and something uglier, tugged at Elsie’s soul.
The low, straining call of a saxophone pulled at her, moving the path of her feet off the sidewalk and down a few steps into a low doorway. Smoke poured out, the acrid smell tangling with the flowered ripeness of summer in a way Elsie didn’t find totally unpleasant, even as some tiny voice in her brain screamed that smoking was illegal in Berkeley bars.
A large man in a leather vest came her way. “You got ID?”
His question barely registered. Her eyes were on the trio onstage, the whiskey-rich notes of the sax blending with a trickling river of piano runs and a drumbeat that seemed to vibrate right under her toes.
“She doesn’t need ID, Rocco.” A man in a silver button-down shirt, open at the collar, stepped to her side. He oozed confidence. “Pretty ladies are always welcome here.”
Rocco stepped back. “You’re the boss, Anton.”
Anton. Visions of Paris swirled in Elsie’s mind.
Her rescuer slid a hand under her elbow, expertly guiding her toward a table in a back corner. “I see you like the music. Can I get you something to drink?”
Elsie shook her head slowly, attention divided between the soul-thrumming music and the delicious curls tangling with the back of his collar. “No, thank you—I don’t drink.” And then she realized that answer didn’t fit the music or the night or the man at all. “Bring me something in a fancy glass.”
His thumb brushed her cheek. “A pretty drink for a pretty lady, coming right up.”
She looked up, suddenly bereft, as the music died away. And then the man on the sax stepped to the edge of the stage and began to play again, one high, solitary wail. He blew an aria of heartbreak and loneliness that wrapped around her very breath, pulling air in and out of her lungs as he sent one aching string of notes after another.
When Anton returned, he slid his chair right up next to hers, one hand gently brushing behind her shoulders. The other deposited a glass in front of her. “One raspberry Cosmo. Second prettiest thing we have in this dive.”
It was a perfect match for her new underwear. Elsie’s cheeks flamed as his fingers traced one of the spaghetti straps of her sundress, wondering if raspberry pink peeked out and suddenly yearning for the safety of sandboxes and mud-pie volcanoes. This was insanity.
Anton ran his thumb down her cheek again, eyes gentle. “Moving too fast, am I?” He slid his hand off her shoulders, lacing their fingers together instead. “Let’s just sit and listen to the music then—we’ll see what magic it stirs up on a summer night. We have all the time in the world.”
His voice pulled at her, just like the music and the smoke and the low-hanging moon. She reached for her glass of deep pink and let the taste of raspberry-laced courage slide down her throat.
~ ~ ~
She had no air. Oh, God, she had no air.
Nat clawed out of sleep, grabbing for her throat. Nighttime panic attacks were always the worst. She dove under her pillow, seeking the flashlight she kept tucked away there so her night terrors didn’t wake anyone else.
And then realized it wasn’t her sixteen-year-old pillow, or her sixteen-year-old bed. She was Natalia Sullivan, grown woman. And she could breathe.
It was only the panic screaming through her soul that felt exactly the same.
Sleepy arms wrapped around her in the dark—and then a very awake husband turned on the lights. “Nat. What’s wrong. Is it the baby?”
Steeped in fear, she tried to get her bearings. “No.” The words rasped out of her aching throat. “Something’s very wrong, but it’s not me. I don’t know what’s going on.” She sank into her breath, trying to get a read on the nightmare stalking her.
Jamie reached out his hand, eyes fierce—and wrapped his fingers around her pendant, power surging.
Nat felt suddenly boneless as the terror melted away, leaving only faint echoes hammering in her heart. And then fear stormed back as she understood what her husband’s magic had done—and what it meant. “Elsie. She’s in trouble.”
Her husband cursed and dove for his phone just as it beeped, and then beeped again. He scanned the incoming messages swiftly. “Melvin and Jennie are on their way to Lizard and Elsie’s house. Whatever’s going on, those damn rocks have woken everyone up.”
She reached out, hoping to touch the anger flaring in his eyes. “It didn’t do me any harm, Jamie.”
“Bullshit.” His arms pulled her into his lap, more roughly than usual. “I felt your mind. God, Nat—is that what those panic attacks used to feel like for you?”
She’d spent five very long years as a teenager having her throat close in terror on a regular basis, surrounded by family that patted her on the head and booked her next therapy appointment. Back then, she would have given her soul for the simple comfort she now found in her husband’s arms. “My pendant doesn’t know all that. It was only trying to wake me up.” She let herself lean into his strength for one last moment, and then slid away to the edge of the bed. “We should go now. Elsie must need us.”
He growled—and moved to the side of the bed. Very few people understood the responsibility to a promise as well as her husband.
~ ~ ~
Stupid alarm. Lizard flailed her arm at the bedside table. It was trashing her really good dream. She snuggled into her pillow, trying to hold on to visions of sandy beaches and sexy chests, and groaned as her alarm continued to vibrate.
Wait. Alarms didn’t vibrate.
More awake now, Lizard reached over for the light. 2:30 freaking a.m., and her alarm was nice and quiet like it was supposed to be. What the hell had woken her up?
And dammit, that sexy chest had looked way too much like the one that might live under Joshua Hennessey’s t-shirt.
Frack, what was she, a testosterone-hazed teenage boy? Lizard turned off the light and dumped her head back into her pillow. Josh most definitely didn’t have permission to invade her dreams. Way, way off limits, buddy. Go away.
She’d almost convinced her tired brain to go back to sleep when the noises started downstairs. The “you’ve been ambushed by a bunch of witches” noises. Lizard reached out with one very annoyed mindlink to tell them all to go home—when the obvious hit.
