Authors: Debora Geary
That surprised Josh.
“That’s not how it looks.”
And that made Jamie incredibly proud of both his wife and the
people he loved.
“Maybe I gave you
the wrong answer before.
Magic
doesn’t change us so much individually—but it changes us
collectively.
Changes what
matters.”
And now he knew what to
say next, and figured his wife would forgive him the telling.
“Nat grew up in an emotional
wasteland.
The thing she needed
most was people who loved her, no questions asked.”
“She got that here.”
Again, not a question.
Josh
turned down what looked like an alleyway.
“You guys get that whole ‘belonging’ thing.”
Yeah.
They
did.
“We have something that sets
us apart, that sometimes makes it difficult to belong or be understood.
Witch Central’s pretty big on
acceptance.”
“That’s what you did for Lizard with this whole WitchLight
thing.”
Jamie blinked.
Either Josh had very good sources, or Lizard was talking more than
anyone thought she was.
“We’d have
done it for her anyhow.
WitchLight’s just a way to get people in the door.”
Josh stopped halfway down a long metal wall and rapped on the
tin.
“Yeah.
She told me she didn’t volunteer.”
Time to walk carefully again.
“She’s had a life where resistance is a pretty useful
survival skill.
When all your
choices suck, it’s easy to get used to saying no.”
Josh stopped, hand halfway to the tin again.
And just stood there, a back-alley
statue frozen in thought.
Jamie watched in astonishment as nothing moved—and a
tangled mess in Josh’s mind unfurled into a thing of beauty.
A flap opened on the metal wall and two steaming go-cups of
coffee got shoveled into Josh’s waiting hands.
“Best coffee in town, if you can get them to serve
you.”
He held one out carefully at
arms’ length, handed the other to Jamie, and flashed a mega-watt grin.
“Is it safe to port while holding hot
liquids?
Beam us home, Scotty.”
Jamie grabbed top-of-the-stairs coordinates in his mind, still
captured by the glowing thing of beauty in Josh’s head.
Something had been solved—he just
had no idea what.
~ ~ ~
Lauren watched Lizard wind through traffic on her way back
across the street, two linguine take-out boxes in her hands.
Maybe food would improve her
assistant’s day.
Nothing Lauren
could put her finger on, exactly—just a really off-kilter witch, and not
the usual, slightly prickly variety of Lizard having a bad day.
She’d been competent, cooperative,
quiet, and totally distracted.
Which was just plain weird.
Ethics had kept her out of Lizard’s mind—so far.
Hopefully linguine would do the
detective work instead.
Lauren
headed back for forks and napkins.
Romano’s linguine was legendary, and so was their habit of forgetting to
add cutlery to their take-out boxes.
Clients tended to frown on realtors eating with their fingers,
so she kept a large supply of forks on hand to protect her dignity.
Lizard backed in the door, juggling boxes and scowling at some
hapless guy on a bike.
“Dude
nearly ran me down.”
Lauren decided not to mention that bikes actually had
right-of-way in the street.
It
might hamper future linguine runs.
“Got forks.
You want water,
soda, or Ginia’s new iced-tea stuff?”
The tea was actually pretty good, but it had a bit of a funky smell.
“I don’t drink anything green and made by Ginia.”
Lizard plunked into a chair and slid
one of the take-out boxes across the desk.
“They had a special on today—there’s green stuff in
your noodles.”
Blasphemy.
Lauren
opened the box, prepared to hate change on sight—and then decided it
smelled pretty darned good.
“Looks
edible.”
She looked up as Lizard’s
first bite disappeared into her mouth.
“How’s it taste?”
Her assistant smirked.
“No idea—I got the regular kind.”
She got no respect around here.
“Mess with my food at your own risk.”
Lizard grinned.
“They have a cute new waiter on today.”
“Join the Witch Central matchmaking crew and I’ll make you go
preview every listing in outer Mongolia.”
Code for the suburbs, and guaranteed to make her city-dweller assistant
cringe.
“I hear there’s a new
development.
Forty houses, all
exactly the same.”
Lizard didn’t look properly terrified.
“If you picked your own guy, they’d stop harassing
you.”
“It’s like buying a house.”
Lauren was feeling chatty—the green linguine was
surprisingly good.
“Some clients
fall in love with the first house you show them.
Some have hopelessly unrealistic expectations.
Me, I’m happy to rent for a while and
wait for the right house to go on the market.”
She paused, fork halfway to her mouth as her brain caught up
with her words.
“And somewhere,
that analogy went really off the rails.”
Maybe the linguine was spiked.
Her assistant seemed way too amused for comfort.
“Renting would imply that you actually
have a guy, even if he’s just temporary.
I think your current guyless state is more like being homeless.”
Since when had Lizard gotten funny?
“I don’t need a guy.”
Lauren shrugged, ready to give the short version of a conversation she’d
had a hundred times in the last ten years.
“I have a life I like, friends I like, and plenty of people
who feed me and come hang out on my couch.”
“You think a guy would change all that?”
Lauren’s noodle-happy brain finally twigged to the wistful note
in Lizard’s voice.
Uh, oh.
What the hell were they talking about
now?
“Not the right guy.
But I believe in moving slowly.
Clients who rush into house purchases
usually aren’t as happy as the ones who take their time, look around a
little.”
And dammit, she believed that—but it seemed like exactly
the wrong advice to be giving one blonde ex-delinquent.
“The crazy happiest, though?
The ones who fall in deep, nutty love
with the first house they see.”
And now it was her voice with the wistful note.
Damned green linguine.
~ ~ ~
Their uptight student was not doing well.
Elsie winced as Kathy tilted over into
triangle pose, looking as if she were stretched out over some torturer’s wheel.
The pose itself wasn’t bad—several in their workshop class
came nowhere near Kathy’s flexibility—but her mental anguish radiated
through the room.
Kathy hated yoga.
Or more precisely, she hated her less-than-perfect attempts to do yoga,
surrounded by people who didn’t all share her quest for perfection.
And Elsie was well aware that a few
short weeks ago, she had been Kathy.
Which meant she had a job to do.
With a quiet wave to Nat, she slid out the door.
Kathy was always the first one out of
the room—and this time, she wasn’t going to have an easy getaway.
Elsie put the kettle on and readied two
cups, and then positioned herself just outside the studio, listening for the
quiet shuffling that would mean the end of class.
She smiled when Kathy emerged first, with none of the slow
stretching or blinking eyes that signaled a relaxed mind and happy yoga
body.
“Good morning.
How was class?”
Kathy stopped, annoyance quickly pushed under a layer of
politeness.
“It’s very
interesting—not quite what I expected, but I’m learning a lot.”
“You hate it, huh?”
Elsie gently guided her student in the direction of the kitchen.
She’d learned a lot about herding from
the denizens of Witch Central.
“I
did when I started, too.
I wanted
one of those studios with mirrors on every wall and mats lined up so we looked
like little yoga dominos.”
“Yes!”
Kathy seemed
surprised, which Elsie took as a good sign.
“I researched online, and all the pictures of yoga classes I
saw looked much more organized.”
“It’s good marketing.
Helps capture those of us who are obsessed with everything being neat
and orderly and correct.”
Elsie
reached for the teapot and nodded toward the small table tucked into the corner
of their closet-sized kitchen.
“But Nat’s not much about marketing.”
Kathy sat, curiosity warring with a need to straighten the
napkins.
“Is that why you’re
working together?
One of those
‘opposites attract’ things?”
“No.”
Elsie brought
over two cups and sat, resting a hand gently on the napkins in their colorful,
disorderly pile.
“I’m learning
from her, and one of the things I’m learning is that I can let go of neat and
orderly a little.”
She leaned over
her cup, enjoying the aromas of strawberry and lemon.
“Do you think you’d feel better in a class with mirrors and
lined-up mats?”
Kathy nodded vigorously.
“Disorder interferes with my sense of peace.
Nat says to let those thoughts just slide away, to find the
peace inside us, but how can I do that with chaos in front of my eyes?”
Well, she’d been hearing Nat’s words—that was a
start.
“What goes through your
mind when you see the chaos?”
“It needs to be fixed.”
Eight years of therapist training made the next question almost
automatic.
“And who needs to fix
it?”
“Me.”
Kathy laughed
self-consciously.
“I’m a mom, and
moms fix things.
I want to line up
the mats, shush all the people who aren’t listening, straighten all the arms
that aren’t pointing up at the sky.
The guy in front of me was wearing his shirt inside out.”
She ground to a halt.
“I guess it’s pretty silly to need to
fix a grown man’s shirt, but I just can’t let go of those thoughts.”
Elsie started to speak—and ran straight into the wall of
those eight years of therapist training.
The thing she wanted to say flew straight in the face of everything
she’d ever been taught.
You
weren’t supposed to talk about yourself.
And it still felt right.
Elsie set down her tea cup and reached for Kathy’s hands.
“When I first got here, I made it
through about three classes before the crooked mats made me totally crazy.
Want to know what I did?”
Kathy just stared, but the curiosity was back in her eyes.
“I bought some lovely, lime-green tape and started putting it
down all over the studio floor.
Nice, neat markers to show people where to line up their mats.”
“Did it work?”
Kathy covered her mouth as a stray giggle escaped.
“Never mind.
Given the way you set up your mat today, I’m guessing not.”
The giggle gave Elsie hope.
“It did for some people.
But I discovered that most people are able to ignore even
neon-green tape.”
She sipped her
tea and watched her student.
“I
also discovered that I’m happier in my life when I’m not trying to use green
tape to tell people where their mats need to go.”
It took a long time for Kathy to speak.
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“It’s heavy to carry,” said Elsie softly.
“All that responsibility weighs a
ton.
This workshop is a safe place
to experiment.
Try setting down
the load for a while.”