Authors: Debora Geary
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.
Even in Witch Central, people didn’t come visiting at 2 a.m.
without a damned good reason.
And she was pretty sure she sensed Melvin in the milling crowd.
Something was wrong.
She hit the floor in one move, the top of the stairs in
three.
By the time she landed in
the living room, fear was jittering in her chest.
She took in the assembled faces in one swift glance and
honed in on Jennie.
“What’s going
on?”
Jennie’s voice might be calm, but her mind was anything
but.
“We’re not sure.
Our pendants woke us all up.
We think it might be Elsie.
She’s not in her bed, is she.”
It wasn’t a question.
Lizard cast out with her mind, seeking the sleepy signature of
her roommate in dreamland.
Nothing.
Jamie blinked out of the living room and returned seconds
later.
“Nope.
Empty bed.”
Lizard looked around the room.
Melvin, sitting calmly on the couch—until you saw his
fingers worrying the knees of his pants.
Vero, coiled energy perched on the couch arm beside him.
Jamie, his arm around his pale
wife.
Caro, hands moving
restlessly on invisible knitting needles, and Jennie, power on full, mind
casting out in all directions.
The
worried tension in the room was suffocating.
Jeebers.
Lizard
tried reaching for reality.
“Do
you guys do this every time a grown woman is out late at night?”
Jennie blinked, and then grinned wryly.
“We wouldn’t sleep much if we did
that.
But for some reason, our
pendants don’t think we should be sleeping right now.
Mine vibrated loud enough to wake the dead.”
The vibrating alarm.
Lizard reached for her own pendant, unease beginning to dance in her
ribs again, even as she tried to convince herself it was just a stupid
rock.
“These things vibrate all
the time.
Maybe she just went for
a walk or a bike ride or something.”
Caro shook her head.
“Gertrude’s still leaning against the fence out there.”
“You’re right, though,” said Melvin softly.
“The pendants signal important
moments.
We don’t know that it’s a
bad one—only that it’s momentous.”
Jamie scowled.
“They sent out a hell of a wake-up call.”
“As they’ve done several times over the years.”
Vero got up from the couch, her
movements expanding to fill the room as they always did.
“But Melvin is right.
Our Elsie may simply be on the edge of
a seismic shift.”
“Seismic” was a very cool word—but not one you wanted
applied to a human being.
Especially your friend.
Lizard read the room and honed in on Melvin.
“You don’t believe that, though.”
His mind still seethed with worry.
He shrugged his shoulders, suddenly looking old and helpless.
“I don’t know, my dear.”
Great.
It always
rocked when the guys in charge couldn’t make up their minds.
Part of Lizard, a big part, believed there was enough of the
stick-butt Elsie left to keep her safe, even in the wee hours of the
night.
The other part knew exactly
what kind of stuff lay out there in the shadows if you were a little daring and
lacking in judgment.
And then she knew.
Lizard looked at Caro, mute fear in her eyes.
The cowboy dream.
Damn.
A new layer of concern painted itself on
Caro’s face.
She turned to the
rest of the group.
“Trapeze flying
isn’t Elsie’s only recurring dream.
She has one about dancing with a sexy cowboy.”
Jennie frowned.
“There aren’t a lot of cowboys in Berkeley.”
“No.”
Caro’s
fingers worried a hand-knit throw, one of Elsie’s.
“But there are plenty of good-looking men who wouldn’t mind
taking a bite out of our naive psychologist.”
More than a bite.
Berkeley might not have cowboys, but it had plenty of jerkwads.
Lizard reached for her jacket.
“I’ll go looking for her.”
Vero’s hand on her arm was gentle steel.
“You’re a very good friend, my
dear.
But you might have been
right the first time, and we’ve gone a little overboard.
Elsie’s a grown woman.
She has the right to be out late at
night, even in the arms of some sexy stranger, without half of Witch Central
tracking her down.”
Lizard shook off the hand.
“I’m not half of Witch Central.
Just one delinquent who knows what kind of crap you can trip across out
there in the dark.”
“I know what’s out there.”
Vero’s eyes were empathetic pools.
“Far better than you think, my dear.
I haven’t always been old and boring.”
Melvin chuckled softly, the tension lines in his forehead
easing.
“I’ll give you old.”
He reached for his wife’s hand.
“You’re saying we need to trust Elsie
enough to give her the chance to explore this moment.”
Vero curled her fingers around his.
“You did it for me.
You waited patiently while I flung myself into Paris garrets and Italian
vineyards and all manner of questionable things in between.”
Melvin’s amused adoration made tears burn in Lizard’s eyes.
“You forgot the underground Goth opera
in Amsterdam.”
Vero’s laugh rolled, and pushed away some of the seething
tension in the room.
“No, but I
was hoping you had.”
Lizard tried to picture Vero dressed in black and chains,
belting opera, and failed miserably.
“Some people do dumb stuff and still turn out okay, but that doesn’t
mean Elsie won’t get into trouble.”
“I know.”
Vero’s
arm settled around her shoulders.
“And those of us who know best what’s out there will worry the most.”
So they were all just supposed to stand here and wait?
Because of the opinion of some old
woman who hadn’t been out on the streets in thirty years?
She hasn’t woken up to Elsie’s cowboy dream,
said Caro’s voice, quiet and
full of intent.
Lizard backed into a corner.
It had taken her a lot of years to learn, but defiance
generally worked better if you did it quietly.
What are we going to do?
~ ~ ~
Jennie breathed out.
Vero might have stopped Lizard’s all-out search—which was
wise.
They didn’t need two
WitchLight students stumbling around the strip, or wherever Elsie was, in the
wee hours of the morning.
But
Jennie wasn’t convinced that they should be leaving the newly daring Elsie out
there to fend for herself, either.
More than one way to skin a cat,
sent Caro, hands holding her
knitting, but eyes focused off in the distance.
Lauren lives closer to downtown—I just woke her up
and asked her to run a scan of the downtown strip.
Jennie was impressed.
Waking Lauren from here was a hell of a reach—Caro had to have
burned through a lot of magic.
I had help.
Lizard
isn’t as agreeable as she looks over there.
Caro
paused for a minute, listening.
I
interrupted Lauren’s tall, dark, and handsome dream.
She’s a bit grumpy at the moment.
Jennie frowned.
Are you sure we should be looking for Elsie?
Vero seems pretty convinced she deserves
a little space on this.
We’re giving her some space.
Caro’s mindvoice was surprisingly mutinous.
If Lauren can find her on mindscan,
Elsie will never even know we were looking over her shoulder.
Jennie sat down beside her lifelong friend, reacting to the
unsaid in her mental tone, and the love behind it.
And if Lauren doesn’t find her?
Then I’ll be leading the witch search brigade.
And Veronica Liantro can sit here or
join me, as she likes.
Jennie looked up to find her nephew watching, eyes ready for
action.
There was more than one
witch in the room who agreed with Caro.
Melvin sat down beside Jennie and patted her knee.
“Are you two done disagreeing with my
wife yet?”
She heard his unspoken message, even though she wasn’t entirely
sure she was in Caro’s camp.
This
wasn’t the way Witch Central worked—dissent, pushed underground, weakened
who they were.
Jennie turned to
Vero, who was closing in on Lizard in the corner.
Time to disagree out loud, like grown-up witches.
Which was a great plan until a sleepy Aervyn parachuted into the
room and landed on his uncle Jamie’s lap, cuddling his blankie and looking
worried.
“Where’s Elsie-Belsie?”
Crap.
Jamie’s mental reaction was sharp,
focused, and not at all visible on his face.
“We’re not sure, superdude.
Sometimes grown-ups go out at night to have fun.
Or maybe Elsie just took a little walk
under the moon.”
Aervyn’s eyes were waking up fast.
“Nuh, uh.
You’re all worried about her, and Lauren is sending out the bat
signal.
How come she’s doing that?”
Jennie sighed.
The
Walkers lived close to Lauren.
No
one had factored that in to their middle-of-the-night mental search party.
“We’re hoping we can find out where she
is, sweet boy.
That’s all.
Maybe she just forgot to leave a note
to tell us where she was going.
How about Uncle Jamie takes you home and tucks you back into bed?”
That suggestion landed like a load of bricks.
Aervyn scowled, all pint-sized witch
defiance.
“No way.
Elsie-Belsie is my friend.
If she’s lost, then I want to help you
look for her.
I can mindyell
really loud.”
All the mind witches in the room threw up extra barriers in
self-defense.
He could indeed—and
sometimes his yelling didn’t come with a lot of warning.
A quick exchange of glances around the
room nominated Jamie as their chief negotiator.
“We’re not yelling yet, buddy—just looking.”