.5 To Have and To Code (24 page)

 The photograph punched a hole in the empty cavern of her heart and sucked a firestorm through the opening.

Her and Daniel.  Dancing together, two halves of one whole.  Nell’s head, curved in pain, was tucked into his shoulder, his arms a circle holding her close.

Aunt Jennie would give it a name. 
Anguish and Solace.

Nell’s fingers yearned to crumple the picture, even as she felt it imprint on her soul.  She knew what came next.

Anguish had kicked Solace to the curb. 

And now, the morning after?  Anguish was desperately sorry.

-o0o-

 “You said hike.  Not death march.”

Daniel listened to his friend gasping for air and slowed down.  Some.  “Since when does a little morning climbing make you wheeze?”

“Two thousand feet up in—” Pedro consulted his watch and sucked in another breath, “less than an hour is enough to make any normal person wheeze.”

“Yeah.”  Daniel handed over water and a protein bar.  “Keep that up and I’ll tell Chloe you need more exercise.”

His buddy smirked.  “Keep that up and I’ll tell Becky you need more sex.”

Becky was a surefire way to win pretty much any argument.  “Sorry.  I woke up cranky, needed to push some of it out.  Should have come alone.”

“You always wake up cranky.”  Pedro chugged water gratefully.  “I’m pretty sure we should have gotten you addicted to coffee when we had the chance.”

“Makes my throwing arm jittery.”  And the stuff tasted foul.  Daniel had no idea why three-quarters of the planet worshipped the coffee bean.

“Hiking up a mountain’s probably not good for your throwing arm either.”

It wasn’t a mountain.  Just an oversized hill.  “I went to a wedding yesterday.”

Pedro’s eyebrows flew up into the clouds.  “On purpose?”

There was no easy way to get past this part of the conversation.  “Nell asked me to go.”

“Was it in Las Vegas?”  Humor spiked in Pedro’s eyes—and then fled.  “No, wait.  Her best friend was getting married, right?”

Damn.  “What are you, head of the Ministry of Gossip?”

“Maddie and Carlie picked it up somewhere.  They said you look good in pink glitter, too.”  Pedro bit into his protein bar and grimaced.  “What flavor is this, moldy gym shoes?”

“It’s calories.  Who cares?”  Only women ate froufrou energy bars.

“Chloe has some lemon ones that are pretty good.”

Daniel shook his head.  He rested his case.  “We’re he-men on a mountain at the crack of dawn.”  Lemon was for post-yoga snacks or something. 

“We’re two slightly-out-of-shape guys gasping for air at 10 a.m,” said Pedro dryly.  “And Chloe can kick your butt while powered by those lemon bars.”

She probably wouldn’t need the bars.  Chloe was one tough cookie, even before she strapped on the gun.  “Maybe you guys should elope.  Weddings make women crazy.” 

“Rough day?”

“Yeah.”  Daniel tossed water bottles and protein-bar remnants in his backpack.  Time to keep moving.  “We’ll head along the ridgeline.”

“I’m grateful for small mercies.”  Pedro fell into stride beside him—the ridgeline trail was practically a highway, unlike the goat path they’d come up.  “It can’t be all that easy to watch a close friend move into a different phase of their life.”

Daniel snorted.  He had some personal experience with that particular phenomenon.  “That happens long before the wedding, dude.”

“Yeah, I guess.”  Pedro looked off into the distance, thoughtful.  “Nell seemed pretty adaptable.  What happened?”

His second baseman’s instincts had always been impeccable.  “The best friend’s moving to Texas.”  And only now, walking along a mountain trail with his own personal version of Sammy, did Daniel really get how much that would suck.

“Ouch.”  Pedro winced.  “Lemme guess.  You offered a shoulder to lean on, she kicked you in the knees?”

Dammit, he wanted a copy of whatever manual on women had been passed out to everyone but him.  “So I should have let her cry in a corner by herself instead?”

“Nope.”

“I should have just let her kick me in the knees?”  He wasn’t at all sure that was the part of his anatomy Nell had been aiming for.

“Nope.”

Daniel scowled.  “I’m pretty sure psychologists are supposed to speak in complete sentences.”

His friend walked silently for a while.  “I only met Nell once.”

For a guy who could analyze opposing team players in ten seconds flat, that was plenty of time.  “You watched her play.  That should have told you plenty.”  Images of Nell’s lithe curves manning second base crowded into his head.

“Yup.  Did.” 

Any more one-word sentences and a certain friend was going to take a two-thousand-foot tumble.  Daniel glared and kicked a rock instead.  “She doesn’t trust me to stand for her.”

Pedro ducked under a low branch.  “More likely, she doesn’t trust something in herself.”

Psychobabble, but at least they were back to sentences.  “No, it was me.  She told me to get lost.”

“Yeah.”  His best buddy grinned.  “Welcome to loving a difficult woman.”

Daniel was pretty sure all the blood drained out of his face.

Pedro held up his hands.  “It’s just a word.  Pick a different one if it makes you feel better, but you’re sure.  She isn’t yet.  She’s still testing you, trying to find out if you’re safe to lean on.  Testing herself to see if she’s brave enough to lean.”

 The air on the ridge was way too low in oxygen.  “How long is she going to keep doing that?”

“She’s kind of like Chloe, I think.”  Pedro paused again, words coming a lot slower than they usually did.  “Incredibly competent, and used to holding everyone else up.  Used to proving she can be one of the boys.”

There weren’t two women on earth who looked less alike than Chloe and Nell, but yeah.  That was pretty much his headache in a nutshell.  Except for one minor detail.  “And she can turn me into a crispy critter with her fingers.”

“Chloe’s got bullets.”  Pedro shrugged.  “When someone’s used to being armed and dangerous, they either get all cocky, or they develop really tight self-control.”

Okay, now he was lost.  “Nell was a mess at the wedding.”

His friend, scrambling over a small rockslide, spared him a sideways glance.  “With you, or with everyone else?”

“With—” Daniel stopped dead, replaying the wedding in his head.  To someone not hooked into Nell’s mind, she’d been the epitome of competent maid of honor.  All while coordinating a quiet witch revolution in the background.  “With me.”

“Yeah.”  Pedro took a seat on a convenient rock.  “I have this friend.  Star athlete, computer genius, aces everything he touches.”

Daniel squirmed, pretty sure he hated where this was going.  “Real hot-shot life I live.”

“This friend of mine,” Pedro ignored the interruption, “occasionally, he cracks.  Wanna know what he does when that happens?”

No.  “Yoga?”

Snort.  “He finds a friend and punishes the hell out of both of them.”

Crap.  A death march probably qualified as punishment.   “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”  Pedro grinned amiably.  “You can buy me a really big breakfast when we get back down.”  He tossed a pebble hand to hand, eyes sobering.  “You come to me when you want a little talk along with your punishment.  When you just want to hurt, you go find Skate and see whose ribs can get broken first.”

It occurred to Daniel, for the first time in his life, that he kept the Skate and Pedro parts of his world very separate.  “Sometimes I just need to kick first and talk later.”

“Exactly.”  His friend waited a beat.  “Nell’s done the kicking part, and you should be freaking honored that it’s you she chose to kick.  Strong women choose their targets very carefully.”

It made a weird kind of sense.  “They teach you that in Psych 101?”

“Hell, no.”  Pedro rolled his eyes.  “They teach some crap about talking through your differences.  Pretty sure they never tried to do that when the other person has a gun.”

Or lightning in their fingers.  “You think Nell will come back to talk?”  It shook him how deeply he wanted it to be true.

Pedro grinned.  “You usually do.”

-o0o-

Come to freaking apologize to a guy and he couldn’t even have the decency to be home.

Nell sat down on the front steps of Daniel’s townhouse, frustrated, hungry, and totally rudderless.  

She stared out over the dismal rental yard, grass fighting for space with weeds, dirt, and the occasional obscenely happy dandelion.  And had the insane urge to water something.

Right.  Because all she needed was another bloody project.

Temper fighting through to the surface, she tugged crossly on lines of magic.  Air power streamed into her fingers—light, jittery, looking for places to go.  A few negligent whirls of her fingers and she had herself a pair of bad baby windstorms, small funnels twisting furiously on her palms.

Devastation in a tiny package.  They totally fit her mood.

She didn’t bother with spells or rituals.  Just hurled her little funnels of destruction into the misbegotten yard, sucking dirt into their whirling maw. 

The pissed-off-adult version of sandbox magic.

She yanked sideways on the furthest funnel before it took out a family of happy dandelions.  Do no harm.  Even if you were a seriously unhappy witch.

When Daniel cleared his throat at the front gate, she nearly wrecked half his house.

Temper steaming along with self-recrimination, she tossed a funnel at his toes.  “Haven’t you learned anything in-game?  Never interrupt a spell in progress.”  Mages were touchy creatures when interrupted, and so were their spells.

“It’s my house.”  He matched her temper with his own.  “With my breakfast inside.  Turn off your attack dog.”

With a sigh, she moved the funnel back into the yard.  No point in leaving a pile of dirt on his sidewalk.  She powered down and got up off his front steps.  “Sorry, I guess I’m still cranky.”

He watched her silently for a moment, and then pulled out keys and unlocked the front door.  “Will food help?  I have eggs, cereal, maybe toaster waffles.”

It was more of an invitation than she deserved.  And she’d come to apologize—time to stop being a brat.  “Got milk?”

He frowned.  “I think so.”

She reached out to open the door.  “Okay.  Let me cook you breakfast, and then I can grovel a little over scrambled eggs.”

His hand settled on top of hers on the handle.  No words, just a steady pressure that waited for her to look up.  And delivered a message—they weren’t moving through the door until she did.

Nell rolled her eyes. 
Bossypants.
  She wasn’t having a wildly mature morning.

His mental snicker nearly set her hurts loose all over again.

A hand stroked down her hair.  No heat, at least by Daniel Walker standards.  Just comfort.

She leaned into the door, resting her forehead against the cool wood.  Sticking both hands into her pockets, she opened a mental link between them.  He deserved to know that she really meant her next words.  “I stomped on you damn hard yesterday, and I’m truly sorry.”

The hand on her hair never wavered in its gentle slide.  “I’m tough.”

Yeah.  “That’s part of why I torched you.”  Just one of the little things she’d figured out wearing a hole in downtown Berkeley’s streets that morning.

“Lemme guess.”  His voice carried hints of amusement.  “Everyone else you consider worthy of a fight was getting married or part of the Great Cookie Underground?”

Something like that.  “You were being nice to me.  I wasn’t going to keep my shit together much longer if you kept it up.”  She looked up, finally meeting his eyes.  “And for that, I really am sorry.”

His hand touched her cheek.  “You already said that once.  You can stop now.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a one-hour-photo envelope from the drugstore down the street.  “I have something for you.”

There had already been way too many pictures that morning.  And Nell had the suddenly eerie feeling he’d been expecting her.  She reached inside and found two photographs.  The first one made her smile.  Blurry, and with composition that would have made Aunt Jennie weep.  But the maid of honor’s eyes were shining.  Happy.  “When was this?”

“When you watched Sammy walk down the aisle to harp reggae.”

She chuckled, oddly touched.  “You were supposed to be looking at the bride.”

“I don’t think so,” he said quietly.

She could feel it in his mind.  The other shoe, ready to drop.

The second picture was her and Sammy, gazes meeting as the carriage pulled away from the church.  In this one, there was no joy. 

He stroked her hair again.  “She’s your sister.”

Nell felt the tears come.  And she felt his arms wrap around her, just as they had the night before.

This time, she let them stay.

-o0o-

He gave her time.  A few minutes rummaging alone in his kitchen.  Long enough to wipe away a few stray sniffles and maybe go on a hunting expedition for his eggs.

He was pretty sure they didn’t come very often, but when the tears started, they’d been a torrent—and he had the distinct feeling that fire witches liked getting wet even less than the average tough gamer.  She seemed a lot more stable now.  At least he hoped.  She’d been dynamite waiting to light when he’d come home and found her on his front stoop.

It was probably all sexist caveman to like that almost as much as her cooking breakfast in his kitchen.

She came out of the room in question, an egg in each hand, and raised an eyebrow. 
I don’t share my eggs with cavemen.  Got a frying pan?

Yup.  She was back.  And clearly still picking up at least some of his thoughts.  “Somewhere.  Will you share whatever you scramble if I can find it?  And if I say please?”

She grinned.  “Maybe if you handle the Realm emergency list for the next week.”

Crap.  He’d really been hoping to eat his eggs before Realm came up.  “I can’t do that.”

She stopped in mid-turn.  “Why?”

“I quit, remember?”

“That could change.”  Nell didn’t move a muscle, but she suddenly seemed a lot more fragile.

He hoped his answer didn’t make things worse.  And checked with his gut to make sure it was still the right one.  “Nope.  I can be interested in Realm, or I can be interested in you.  Right now, I don’t think I can handle both.”  Hell, he wasn’t at all sure he could handle one.