A Dangerous Witch (Witch Central Series: Book 3) (17 page)

Nat only smiled and held her peace.  Letting an eleven-year-old lead.

Moira breathed in the wisdom and patience gathered in this faerie glen.  She didn’t know where the road headed yet, but it rose up before them, teasing hints of light sliding through the leaves.  And when this group of travelers hit the road, the road paid attention.

A flute shifted in restless hands.  “When I play music, who I am matters.”  She looked around the circle, meeting each pair of eyes.  “I think who Mia is matters too.”

Mia shifted, agitated.  A warrior child, unhappy with such an amorphous answer. 

It wasn’t her reaction an old witch watched, however.  It was all the quiet, wise ones, sitting in a faerie glen, sipping tea.

And to a person, they were all nodding.

Shay had found the first notes of Mia’s song—even if her sister didn’t recognize them yet.

Look to the witch, not her magic.

-o0o-

Nell sat down at Jamie’s table with her plate of spaghetti, taking the temperature of the room.  Something had changed.  A lot of somethings.

There were a whole pile of Sullivans preparing for action.  And whatever it was, Jamie, Devin, and Matt were in the thick of it. 
What are the three of you up to?

We have a training idea.
 Jamie’s mental gulp was audible.
 It might be a little bit nuts.

Mia needs it,
sent Devin, scooping meatballs onto Benny’s plate. 
She can’t ignore her magic forever.  The smarter folks around here say we need to work from her strengths. 

Matt was nodding, and so was Nat.  Clearly Lauren had them all tapped in to one mind channel again.

Nell was still lost.

“Talk out loud.”  Mia’s arms were folded across her chest, her face one big storm cloud.

“Uncle Devin has an idea,” said Aervyn calmly, stabbing a meatball from the serving dish.

Nell raised an eyebrow.  If superboy didn’t want this conversation under wraps, there was probably not a whole lot they could do about it.  And her girl of the fierce orange and black glitter painting needed a voice in her own future.

None of the people hooked into her head disagreed.

“We were thinking,” said Jamie, with a quick glance around the table in general, “that we could go hang out in Realm and try making fireballs.  But we need to think about this really hard and carefully before we do it.”

Nell stared.  And then she caught the corner of what brewed in her brother’s mind.  Dragon cages and shields and every kind of precaution known to programmer or witch—and fake magic flows.  Train the witch, but check her magic at the door.

Jamie nodded. 
And if her hands tingle, she’ll ignore it, the same way she’s done for the last two days.

Damn.  She could feel her warrior brain charging through the idea.  Looking for flaws.  It had a lot—but it also had possibilities.  Real, live possibilities.  Fireballs were big magic, the kind that Mia would love.  And they had a very good program already written to clean up scorch marks.  Even a wild baby witch couldn’t possibly do as much damage as a herd of dragons.

Mia frowned.  “Last time I was in Realm was pretty bad.”

Nell refused to let the shudder win.  The ravenous furnace of fire chased her dreams every night.  It didn’t get to haunt her days.

Jamie nodded soberly.  “I know.  But I was thinking we’d work with in-game magic only, and you know how to ignore your real magic now.”  There had been lots of opportunity for Mia to prove that in the last twenty-four hours.

Mia still looked skeptical.

Her trainer pushed gently.  “Part of being able to make a good spell is knowing how to work with the flows, right?”

Nell saw Daniel figure it out fastest—and it did her heart several layers of good when his face lit with approval. 

“Oooooh.”  Mia’s eyes gleamed, finally caught up.  “In Realm, I could code power flows so I can see them.”

“We’ll help.”  Ginia and Shay spoke with one voice. 

“I’ll supervise.”  Jamie’s voice was wry, and edged with a sternness that wouldn’t fool his nieces for an instant.  “And I veto glitter.”

Nell snorted, along with half the other people eating spaghetti.

No way he was going to win that one.

And if she knew her husband, every single line of code was going to get written, vetted, or tested by his hands. 

We’ll arm wrestle for it,
sent Retha briskly. 
I believe I still rank as a fairly decent coder.

Jamie grinned. 
Okay, maybe I’m not supervising.

Smart man.  Nobody on earth could match Daniel and Retha working together.

“I have to ask,” said Devin quietly—and silenced all the chatter at the table, mind channeled and otherwise.  “Are we really sure this is a good idea?  There’s a lot of stuff that could go wrong.”

Everyone stared at the least cautious Sullivan on the planet—and the guy who had come up with the idea in the first place.

“Yes.”  Nat spoke from the end of the table.  “It uses Mia’s strengths, and the strengths of a whole lot of people around this table.”  She paused, looking at her niece with love and every kind of respect.  “And one day Mia isn’t going to be able to ignore her tingly hands, or she isn’t going to want to, and she’s going to need to know what to do.”

“She’s right.”  Govin weighed in with two words.

Devin offered up a single, bemused shrug, smart enough not to argue with the two most cautious people in the room. 

Nell met Daniel’s eyes and saw that his answer matched hers.  She nodded at Jamie.  Green light.

“Wait.”  Mia’s lips quivered and then firmed back up—but all her excitement had fled.  “My magic is horrible.  I guess I don’t really understand how playing with fireballs in Realm is going to change anything.”

The quiver told Nell they’d just made the right choice.  Indecision was a fighter’s worst enemy—and if Mia was ever going to touch the power she could call and not end up charred ashes, she would have to be a fighter to the core.

She had the heart for it.  They just had to give her time to practice—and a reason to take out her sword.  Nell set her own quivers aside and prepared to help her daughter do just that.  To work from her strengths.  “You know that new maze level Uncle Jamie just built?  The one with the nasty trap doors and the zombies?”

Lots of heads nodded.  She was speaking gamer language now, and they were mostly natives.

Nell raised an eyebrow at her daughter.  “So when your dad tried that level, what did he do?”

Mia raised an eyebrow back—but her answer came quickly.  “He leaned on the wall until he figured it out, and then he got right through the first time.”

Jamie snorted.  “Barely.”

Nell grinned.  Barely counted.  And Daniel Walker very rarely required two tries at anything, even Jamie’s most devious challenges.  She focused back on her daughter.  “And how did you get through it?”

“Well, I had five lives, so I used them.”  Mia shrugged, a little confused.  “But I got through faster than Dad, because he sits and thinks a long time.  So I won.”

Something which had pleased Daniel at least as much as his girl.  But that wasn’t where Nell was headed.  “Right, but back up a second.  What did you do with your first life?”

“I tried going through the window.”  Mia stuck out her tongue at her uncle.  “
Somebody
put a bottomless pit spell on the other side.  So I went through the stockade door the next time.”  She glanced at Jamie again, eyes glinting with a hint of arrogance.  “I knew the loose brick in the moat was a decoy.  Bet you had a dragon behind that one.”

“Nope.”  He grinned back.  “Zombie bunnies.”

They were so getting off track.  Nell bonked a mental baseball off the side of her brother’s head.  “You knew you had lives to lose, so you tried some things and learned from them.”

“Yeah.”  Mia looked totally lost now.  “That’s how I always play.”

“Exactly.”  Nell met her daughter’s eyes, one fighter to another.  “Working with magic is just another level, sweetheart.”

It took a long, still moment.  And then comprehension blazed from Mia’s face.  “In Realm, I’ll have some lives to lose.  I can make mistakes and learn fast.” 

Ginia elbowed her sister, her face wearing a grin as big as the sky.  “And you’re better at that than almost anybody.”

Aervyn’s eyes were big.  “Even Dad.”

Daniel stole a meatball off his son’s plate.  “I’m faster than you think, kiddo.”

Aervyn giggled and ported himself three more.  “Can I help do some of the coding?”

“Not a chance.”  Jamie rolled his eyes at his nephew.  “But you can play with the zombie bunnies if you want.  So long as you don’t make them glitter.”

His three nieces groaned in predictable unison.

Nell ignored the normal Sullivan family chaos as it sprang into action.  She was too busy watching Mia’s face.

Drinking in the eyes of a girl who had finally figured out how she could fight.

Chapter 14

Showdown in Realm.

Lauren grinned as the field outside of Marcus’s castle keep filled up with spectators.  Most baby witches wanted to try out their new skills in private.  Not this one.  Rumor had it Mia had invented this idea at the crack of dawn, over waffles that had been long gone by the time an emissary had been sent out to their cottage.

The Sullivans and Walkers, taking their new mantra very seriously.  Work from Mia’s strengths.

Which was how an online training session had turned into a massive gamer block party.  Or whatever you called it when the residents lived in a country that hadn’t bothered with things like sidewalks yet.  This definitely wasn’t Berkeley.  Or Kansas.  Or anywhere else sane realtors lived.

Lizard, who had made very sure her boss arrived on time, had promptly wiggled her fingers, flashed something called a spell cache, and disappeared.

Oh, well.  Lauren wouldn’t be the only one wandering in a foreign land today.  The gates had been opened wide into the witch-only levels of Realm.  Mia, aided by her sisters, had coded the in-game power streams to be visible, and played with them in the back room long enough to convince even Govin that they didn’t make her hands tingle.  And then they’d posted a Realm-wide contest.

Today, everybody got to be a witch.

And Mia got to be just another gamer trying to make a bigger, more glittery fireball.   Full-immersion normalcy, Sullivan style.

It was buoying up the hearts of a lot more people than just their fire mage.  Mia wasn’t the only one who lived happiest at full steam ahead.

Lauren looked at her hands skeptically.  Maybe there was a gentler contest for the wimpy witches who weren’t all that thrilled about trying to make a basketball of flames.

Dev grinned and squeezed her shoulders.  “You’ll live.”

She laughed.  Water witches weren’t usually big fans of fire magic either, but her husband riffed off crowds, just like his niece.  “This is gonna get a little crazy.”

“Yeah.”  Said with little-boy glee that was reflected in a thousand minds rumbling on the field, waiting for action.

Lauren looked around again, amused and very glad she wasn’t in charge.

The girls had set up practice stations, manned by witches who knew how to make fireballs, coders to help anyone who needed a little technical boost, and big pails of water.  “Who’s running the bucket brigade?”  Realm’s coded magic sometimes took on characteristics of the real stuff—and there were a whole lot of shiny wizard robes and other flammable gear on the field today.  Lauren looked down at her jeans.  She was way underdressed.

“Me, I think.”  Dev, also clad in street clothes, looked totally unconcerned.  “And probably Nathan and Daniel.”

Water power with teenage-boy stamina and one of the world’s best coders.  That would probably do.   This place was safe enough for a fire mage—it could handle a couple of minor fireball incidents.

The sounds of a small explosion in the far back corner were quickly followed by a cloud of sickly green smoke.

“Someone forgot to ground their magic,” said a delighted voice at Lauren’s shoulder.  Helga, resplendent in hot-pink overalls and the world’s biggest spangly earrings, didn’t look like either an octogenarian or a witch.  She held out her hands to Devin, an unactivated spellshape on her palms.  “How’d I do?”

“Beats me.”  The big water witch shrugged and grinned.  “You should ask someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Helga laughed.  “That’s what Edric said.”

Devin’s eyes gleamed.  “He’s here?  In Realm?”

Edric was the old, cranky witch who had somehow convinced the coolest eighty-year-old on the planet to be his wife.  Lauren was pretty sure the staid and proper water witch wouldn’t be caught dead making fireballs in a computer game.

Or she would have been sure a year ago.  Marriage changed everyone—but Edric was morphing more than most, thanks to the impressive force of gravity he’d married.

“He stayed home.”  Helga didn’t look at all upset by this fact.  “He’s making his special chili—said I can bring home the troops later if anyone’s hungry.”

Edric’s chili was five-alarm hot and full of mysterious ingredients.  And none of that would stop the hordes from pounding a path to his door—the chili was also delicious.  Lauren’s mouth watered in anticipation.  “Does he have any idea how many troops there are today?”  Given Helga’s penchant for adoption, everyone on the field might be coming home with her.