.5 To Have and To Code (12 page)

It pleased her greatly that after nineteen years, her boys still underestimated her.  “So I heard.”

He looked at her sharply now, the vivid intelligence he’d been born with sliding front and center.  “Oh,
reeeeally
.”

Perhaps they didn’t underestimate her quite enough.  “Rumor travels thick and fast at the downtown offices—you know that.  And Lisa tells me your meeting caused quite a stir.”  Their lovely receptionist had provided several other salient details, but Retha wasn’t laying down her whole hand just yet.

“Nell’s twenty-seven, Mom.”  Said with the kind of long-suffering tone her boys used for everything from empty cookie jars to disaster and heartbreak.

“She is.”  Retha patted her son’s arm.  “So you still have at least eight more years of me interfering in your life.”

He snorted, amused.

She debated her options and chose the direct route.  “Without violating the bonds of sibling love, what can you tell me about this Daniel Walker?”

He grinned.  “Probably not a lot more than you already got from Lisa and Yahoo.  He has a mean fastball, a sneaky slider, and he got totally screwed by the major league team who drafted him.  Never played.  Should have.  Contract disputes and egos got in the way of the most talented new guy in years.” 

That much she knew, and it worried her.  Little boys held tight to their dreams of baseball glory—and having those go down in flames of unfairness might twist a man up some.

“I don’t think it did,” said Jamie quietly, picking up on her thoughts as she’d hoped he might.  “He’s bored, I think, but he seemed okay.”

A lot of young wisdom in not very many words.  Her son read people extremely well.  And something was going unsaid.  “But?”

“He’s a witch and we don’t know him.”  He frowned, digging through his memory banks.  “He moved here for college, so maybe he just never hooked up with any Berkeley witches, but…”

Yes, there was likely a story there.  Some witches were very solitary.  And some grew up in places where having power wasn’t such an easy and open secret.  “He wouldn’t be the first witch to stay undercover.”

“He’s not going to be able to stay there now.”

“Indeed.”  Retha contemplated the facts as she knew them.  “Hacking into Realm’s witch-only levels wasn’t exactly a quiet act.”  It was still the primary topic of game-chat conversation.  She’d have given much to be a fly on the wall of The Wizard and The Hacker’s first meeting in real life.  “How did he deal with your sister’s temper?”

“Pretty sure that’s protected by sibling privilege.”

Retha hid a grin.  Her children had invented that particular cop-out after a long conversation with one of Witch Central’s resident lawyers.  They’d been about five.  “Give me the publicly acceptable version.”

“He has balls.  And he gets her.”  Jamie sounded far more impressed by the second.

The first part she could work out well enough.  Nell would have walked in with magical guns blasting—and any guy who hadn’t run for cover was either possessed of a decent dose of bravery or a complete lack of common sense.

That wasn’t the part that had Retha intrigued, however.  “He gets her how, exactly?”  Sometimes sibling privilege needed to be leaned on a little. 

Her son squirmed and turned the corner to the small, squat building that housed the local hardware store.  An anachronism in most neighborhoods, but this one did excellent business.  Witches broke a lot of things.

She waited patiently for her youngest to work his way through the tangled strands of loyalty, love, and family gossip.

Jamie pulled open the door to the store, waving at the owner behind the counter.  The Sullivans were his best customers.  “He got her un-mad.  Mostly, anyhow.  And he convinced her to let him into The Dungeon.  And he made Dorito jokes.”

Retha only knew a handful of men who could have pulled off that trifecta—and she was talking to one of them.  She smiled and headed to the wall of wrenches, mission completed.  She’d dug out enough. 

The Hacker was coming to The Dungeon.  And he had to walk through her front door to get there.

Part II:
 The Kindling

Chapter 8

Daniel walked up to the porch of the big, rambling, two-story Craftsman and hoped he had the address right.  Realm was under-marketed, but even so, it should be making its owners millions.  Their downtown offices had reflected that kind of prestige.

This place looked like… a home.  One with echoes of kids in the hallways and fingerprints on the windows.  Not that he heard any small creatures—it just had that feel.

The front door opened and a face poked out.  Its owner surveyed him unabashedly, even as her eyes glinted with silent laughter.  “You must be Daniel Walker.  Come on in.”

He knew who she was.  Any gamer with a sense of history did.  Retha Sullivan, the woman who had shattered the ranks of male-only gaming.  Kicked butts left and right back in the days when game scores lived on clunky machines with green text. 

And then released Realm, the best of the first generation of video games.  One of the few that marketed itself on something other than the measurements of its female avatars and the size of its weapons.

Probably why he’d ignored it for fifteen years.    “You must be Retha.  That Merlin’s maze of yours is legendary.”  He’d spent most of the last twenty-four hours doing penance for fifteen years of ignorance.  Daniel Walker always did his homework.

She smiled, clearly amused.  “If you’re trying to make me feel old, mission accomplished.”

There was nothing remotely old about the woman standing in front of him.  She radiated easy power—the kind that said she could be president, helm a starship, or feed a hundred people dinner without breaking a sweat.

He had no idea why the light humor in her eyes suddenly went supernova.

And no idea why he was still standing in the doorway of the Sullivan family home.  “I’m supposed to be meeting Nell today.  This was the address your receptionist gave me.”

“She sent you to the right place.”  Retha pulled the door open wider and slung a companionable hand through his arm.  “Come back to the kitchen first, and I’ll send you down to The Dungeon bearing refreshments.  Jamie and Nell are cleaning motherboards this morning, and there’s been a fair amount of cursing.”

He wiggled his arm—and decided very quickly that escape wasn’t an option.  “You run a gaming empire out of your basement?” 

Retha shot him a grin that looked disconcertingly like the one that belonged to her daughter.  “If it’s an empire you’re looking for, I hear there’s an opening in marketing downtown.”

He shuddered.  God save him from marketing dweebs and a dress code that required socks and ties. 

She glanced in the direction of his feet, chuckling.  “I think you’ll do, Mr. Walker.”

Magicians.  Mindreaders. Daniel remembered the quiet undercurrent of chat-room awe he’d found, researching the Sullivans.  And had the strange sense that sometimes gaming fictions were true.

He looked up to find Retha watching him intently, a plate of cookies in her hand.  He stared back, mind hard at work.  When the gears fell into place, he grinned and took the plate.  Two decades of gaming experience and mother of six boys.  No mindreading required—she had plenty of experience with his kind.  Magic explained.

She turned back to the counter, grabbing a pitcher of something cold and wet—and he had the oddest feeling he failed a dare.

He reached for the pitcher.  “I can carry that.”

“Not a chance, my young friend.”  Retha collected a handful of glasses and gestured toward the stairs.  “If you think I’m going to miss our latest employee’s entrance into The Dungeon, you’re sadly mistaken.”

The last time he’d seen a grin like that, it had been worn by a ten-year-old baseball catcher.  Daniel headed for the proverbial lion’s den, cookies in hand.  And wished desperately for a bush.

-o0o-

Nell wasn’t sure what caught her attention first—the familiar clomp of her mother’s feet on the stairs, or her brother’s mind glee.

Crap.  She’d been buried deep in code and motherboard parts and clearly missed something. 
What’s up?

Mom’s got Daniel.
 Jamie leaned back, grinning. 
I didn’t catch it all.  Something about socks and lions.

Her brother’s mindreading skills were feeble, particularly when there were walls in the way.  Nell cast out with her own powers, trying to catch up on what she’d missed—and ran into the lion.  The Hacker, mental channels coiled and ready to pounce.  Followed by her mother, highly amused and mind barriers locked up tighter than Fort Knox. 
Dammit Mom, quit scaring the new guy.

I don’t think he scares easily
, replied Retha, following the new guy into the room.

Meddling mom, kid brother snickering in the corner, and Doritos that had not yet made it to her bloodstream.  Oh, glorious day.  Nell stepped forward and stuck out her hand.  “Good morning.  Welcome to the real Enchanter’s Realm.”

The humor that flashed into Daniel’s eyes did strange things to her insides—and earned him serious points from everyone else in the room.

Which was pretty much the last straw.  She turned to Jamie, smiling sweetly.  “I think Devin needs some help getting little old ladies across the street.  Take Mom with you—she can supervise.”  Her mental voice was less sweet. 
Not a spectator sport, people.  Go away.

I work here,
replied Jamie dryly.

Not today, you don’t.  Big-sister veto.  Go.

Daniel watched the byplay he could hear, forehead furrowed.  And raised an eyebrow as two Sullivans meekly headed up the stairs.  “Impressive.”

It would be more impressive if they didn’t stop at the top of the stairs to eavesdrop.  Nell kept a mental channel open to watch for spies, took a deep breath, and turned back to the newest member of the Realm team.  “You wanted to get started quickly.  Let me show you around.”

He watched her for a moment, curious, and then headed for the nondescript door in the back corner.  “Your servers are in here?”

She blinked as he bypassed the big bank of monitors and three state-of-the-art desktop workstations.  Most guys wanted to play with the shiny things first.  She caught up to him, deactivating the sentry spell that guarded the room—and ignored the small voice in her head that insisted Daniel Walker wasn’t “most guys.”

He opened the door, reflexively shivering as cool air blasted out.  Nell grinned and heated the air up several degrees—Jamie’s spells were always overkill, and she preferred not to freeze while giving a guided tour of the server guts.  She ducked under Daniel’s arm and entered the room.  “We have three boxes in here and two offsite mirrors.  Good security keeps them all separate.”

“That’s a lot of back-up.”

Nell picked her way through the server wires, cursing her flip flops—a knee-jerk reaction to yesterday’s skirt, and not remotely well suited to a floor covered in tangled cables. 
Somebody
hadn’t cleaned up after last week’s mishap that had taken down server three.  “Witches get into a lot of trouble.”

“What?”  His mental stutter didn’t last long.  “Oh, you mean your elite player levels.”  He frowned, looking around.  “These are top-notch boxes—your gamers shouldn’t be bringing them down.”

Ha.  He’d be singing a different tune in a week.  “Realm has leading-edge graphics and server-heavy capabilities like spellcoding.  It takes all this to keep the lights on.” 

Which they managed.  Mostly. 

He chuckled and bent down behind server three.  “Is this the one that usually crashes?”

What was he, a computer psychic?  “How’d you figure that out?”

His eyes did the lazy dance that she already knew meant he was amused.  “It’s the one you keep glaring at.”

It’s the one she wanted to melt into a mush of metal, but he might not appreciate that intention, given his current position behind their piece of bad-boy electronics.  Nell made her way over to the corner he’d wedged himself in and joined him peering into the server’s innards.  “See anything?”  Maybe the edges of someone’s spell had gotten leaky.  Or Devin had set loose a magical rat.  She leaned in, scanning magically—and then realized, far too late, exactly what she’d done.

Squished herself into two square feet.  With a really hot guy whose mind had just flared with desire. 

A really hot guy who hacked innocent people for a living and ran whenever the going got tough.

Oh, hell.

-o0o-

Daniel closed his eyes—and hoped server three didn’t melt.  And then opened them again and got the first good look at her face.  Flushed cheeks.  Eyes sparking in the dim electronic light.

And hands fisting in midair.

She was well aware of what had just flashed to life between them, and she was tempted.  But while he’d managed to confuse her some, Nell Sullivan still thought he was second cousin to a rat.  Which was making her mad as hell.

He wasn’t sure what to react to first, and this was not the place to figure it out.  Running a hand backward along the wall, he tried to find a way out of the tangle of server wires and conflicted woman.