An Imperfect Witch (29 page)

Nell grinned at the number of glasses of milk in progress.  Crowd, incoming.  And then Moira’s words sank in.  “Wait.  You’re here because of a missing flower?”  Not a chance.  She looked at the new arrival more closely.  Wily old witch.  “Something’s up.”

“I do believe so, yes.”  Green eyes misted ever so slightly.  “I believe a seed will bloom today.  And I’ve come to see it happen.”

The oddest moments turned into the special ones.  The herd would be here shortly—Nell could already feel the vibration of feet thudding down stairs and hallways.  She reached for Moira’s hand and gave it a squeeze. 

Very glad the world’s best gardener had decided to drop in.

-o0o-

Lizard stared at the edifice rising from the street in front of her, not sure whether to pass out or giggle hysterically.  “It’s a freaking castle. 
With a turret.
”

“Yup.  The turret’s cool.”  Lauren jiggered with the lockbox.  “Asking price is under your budget.”

Lizard looked at the listing sheet.  Way under.  “Says it needs repairs.”  In the kind of marketing speak that meant major ones.

“Depends on your standards.”

“And on whether your banker recovers from the drugs she was clearly on while we were visiting.” 

“Not gonna happen.”  Lauren poked Lizard in the ribs.  “Move.  I told her we’d have a deal by the end of the day.”

This whole thing smelled worse than incinerated experimental garbage.  “And why is your banker so damn eager to lend me buckets of money?”  Forget buckets.  Oceans of money.  Galaxies, even.  More zeros than Lizard had ever seen in one place in her whole life.

Apparently grown-ups had mortgages.  Ones big enough to make them grow a new ulcer every month.  Neither Lauren nor her pet banker had been remotely flexible on that point.

“Because she’s not an idiot.”  Lauren was already headed up the stairs.  “You have great cash flow, excellent credit history, stable employment, and a successful entrepreneurial venture.  What’s not to like?”

This was forty-seven flavors of insane.  “I’m a twenty-three-year-old with tats.”  And half a degree in poetry.

“That too.”  Her boss grinned down from the top of the stairs.  “That’s why I took you to
my
banker.  She has tat envy now.”

Drugs.  Had to be.  Lizard stopped, momentarily distracted by the steep, dark staircase and doorways jutting off makeshift landings.  “What is this place, anyhow?”  It wasn’t a house, at least not anymore.

“Used to be student digs.  Then some guy bought it thinking he would turn it back into a single-family dwelling.”

Even Lauren’s banker wasn’t doling out that kind of money.  “So he’s sobbing in bankruptcy now?”

“Nope.  Married a sexy young thing by the name of Fritzy and took his midlife crisis another direction.  Never touched the place.” 

“The asking price is insane.”

“And negotiable.”  Lauren winked.  “Pretty sure we can knock off twenty percent—I hear Fritzy is expensive.”

And the agent who had leaked that information was dumber than a flat tire.  Lizard hit the top landing and looked left.  Straight into the turret.  “Wow.”  It was a total dump—banged-up walls, missing floorboards, an antique hotplate sitting in a corner on a folding card table.  And still awesome.

“Bathroom’s through there.  These are studios mostly, with a couple of one-bedrooms.  Enough space for twelve tenants.”

Several neural junctions in Lizard’s brain backfired all at once.  “Tenants?”

“Sure.”  Lauren stopped moving for a minute.  “You don’t think Trinity and crew are gonna move in just because you buy them a nice house, do you?”

Yes.  No.  Frack.  “They take noodles.”

Lauren only rolled her eyes.

“I can’t charge rent.  They’re broke.”  Worse than broke.

“Do a sliding scale—twenty-five percent of income or something.”

Lizard frowned.  “Some of them should be in school.”

The woman who had once marched a certain ex-delinquent assistant down the street to the community college registrar managed not to laugh.  Barely.  “So offer rent credit for courses passed.”

Damn.  “You were Mafia in a previous life, right?”

Lauren walked over to the window, ignoring the compliment.  “It’s dingy enough that nobody’s going to feel like a charity case.  But it’s right off the strip, close to everything, private units, lots of light, and it has good bones.  The original conversions were decent.  Plumbing and wiring’s to code.”

Move-in ready if your standards were low enough.

And it was Witch Central’s turf.  Lizard could read between the lines well enough.  Any of Trinity’s crew who wanted part-time work would have it.

It was a miracle with a
For Sale
sign. 

Except for one really big problem. “They’re in hiding for a reason.”  Some for safety, some evading the system, some for reasons of mental health and things darker.  Castles weren’t exactly stealth.

“Yeah.”  Lauren’s eyes got the same look they’d had at the bank.  “There are two ways you can play this.  You can leave an open door on your really big basement and build a really big tab at Romano’s and wait for trouble to show up.  Or you can help them hook into the system on their terms.”

The system sucked.  Every defiant teenage-delinquent memory in Lizard protested.

“
This
is the grown-up part,” said Lauren quietly.  “You know people.  You can make this work.”

Names rose faster in Lizard’s brain than she could turn them off.  Elsie.  Bike rider, trapeze artist, and really good psychologist.  Tony the gardening guy.  He could fix anything, and he didn’t take shit from anybody.  Wu, who ran the downtown teen shelter and loved her new condo.  Freddie—retired now, but he’d still give anyone a ride anywhere.  Maria, the police captain who had spent three days walking the streets with Lizard, meeting everyone in her new precinct.

It just meant living in a castle with a bunch of street toughs.  Lizard closed her eyes and wondered how a certain guy felt about running a high-class flophouse.  It couldn’t be any worse than beige.  “Where would Josh and—”  Lizard stopped dead, knowing she couldn’t walk the slip back.  “Where would I live?”

“Not here.”  Lauren leaned against a door jamb, wearing the poker face of the century.  “You need space that’s yours.  Separate from all this.”

Welcome to Planet Way-The-Hell-Past-Pluto.  “You think I should buy
two
freaking houses?”

“Yup.  We can run the financials back at the office, but I’m pretty sure they work, so long as I do my job on the negotiations and you keep the budget tight on repairs here and stay pretty modest on the place for yourself.”

The absurdity of it landed all at once.  Lizard slid down a wall, soaked in helpless laughter.  “I hear Trinity’s place is going to be vacant.”

A second body slid down the wall beside her—but Lauren wasn’t laughing.  “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.  I know the perfect place.”

-o0o-

Lauren stood three feet inside the front door and knew there were very few moments in her real-estate career—past, present, or future—that she would love more than this one.

Lizard looked over from her spot behind the counter and sent a quick shot of pungent mental disgust.  “Quit snickering.”

“Totally not.”  Lauren was trying very hard not to laugh.  Or to blubber.  It was just that kind of moment.  “I think the salmon countertop just screams your name, doesn’t it?”

New countertops would make an excellent housewarming gift.

A bewildered sigh blew out of the kitchen.  “There have to be a hundred houses that make more sense than this one.”

That was the kind of dumb argument clients made right before they capitulated and fell in total real-estate love.  “Yup.  We can go look at some, if you want.”

This time it was Lizard who snickered.  “You have some top-secret listings I haven’t seen?”

Close-in Berkeley was their turf and Lizard was their scouter.  “Nope.  But it’s different when you’re the potential homeowner.”  Lauren was happy to spout comforting lines of realtor nonsense for as long as necessary.  She was absolutely certain they weren’t leaving this house.

Salmon countertops and all.

Lizard ran her fingers along a gap in the wall.  “We could totally put one of those eat-in counters here.  And a decent gas range.”

Watching a client fall in love with a house was the absolute best part of Lauren’s job.  Watching
this
client fall in love…  She stepped forward, well aware that blubbering would probably get her fired.  “That window faces east, so some great light’s going to stream through in the morning.  Throw in a glass-tile backsplash to bounce it around a little, and you could have yourselves a really great breakfast hangout.”

Lizard smiled, attitude lost in the mess of ideas thundering in her head.  “Some of us eat all three meals in our kitchen.”

Adults didn’t have to apologize for eating dinner on the couch.  Especially when their husbands were cuddly.  “What are you going to do upstairs?”  She’d seen nicer rabbit warrens.

“Besides add a bathroom?”  Lizard shrugged, still surveying the kitchen.  “Dunno.”

Lauren grinned.  Her smart associate realtor would have had a quick answer about skylights and sacrificing a bedroom for livability and a really great soaker tub. 

But Lizard Monroe, client, didn’t give a damn about any of that.  She would follow in Moira’s footsteps—inside the house, anyhow.  The heart would live in the kitchen.  Everything outside of that room was just trappings.

Time to add her heaviest foot on the scale.  “You can do the minimum down payment on the castle, put the whole mortgage over there.”  The math on that would make her banker squeak, but Lauren didn’t care.  “Pay cash for this one.”

When Lizard looked up, something had lit in her eyes.

Dammit.  Lauren swallowed back the blubbering—the deal wasn’t done yet.  “It would be yours.  You would own it outright.”  Home.  No strings attached. 

Lizard could see it now.  Smell it.  “It’s an insane amount of money.”

Lauren was pretty sure a dude named Josh was going to alter that equation pretty quickly, but she’d eat her license before she said so.  “Both places are livable now.  And I hear you’re getting better at selling houses.”  Berkeley Realty owned the number-one spot on the city’s Sold List.  But the resident of that spot was far prouder of the sneak attack being launched from number thirteen. 

Lizard Monroe was going to have to attend the Top 10 luncheon before Christmas.  Which she’d probably see as punishment, so it hadn’t exactly come up yet.

“It’s bigger than my apartment.”  A future owner’s eyes, measuring.  Dreaming.

Just one more piece for her client to figure out, and then Lauren was putting this one in the win column with a big, fat gold star.

Lizard’s brain snapped into focus.  “Raven.  I forgot about Raven.  She can’t live in the castle.  She touched the streets, but not like that.  She won’t fit there.”

Lauren waited.  Good realtors fed their clients answers.  The best knew when to shut up and let the obvious dig its own way out.

When it finally hit, the rightness nearly exploded out Lizard’s ears.  “My apartment.”

Yup.  Where the rent was cheap, the neighbors were nosy, and karmic justice was embedded in the walls.

A castle for the street kids, an apartment for the sister, and a chance for two really awesome people to shape what came next in a place big enough to hold them both.

Lizard put her forearms down on the countertop, fingers wrapped around her bracelet, closed her eyes, and barely breathed.

And Lauren, finally letting her tears fall, slid quietly out the front door.  She paused, hands encircling the door knob, to make one last wish.  The realtor had done all she could.

The rest was up to the dreamer in the kitchen.

Chapter 24

She was good at this selling stuff.

Lizard tried to remind herself of that as she walked up the skinny flight of stairs to her apartment, Raven on her heels.  “It’s not very big, but it’s close to everything and the neighbors are cool.”  Frankie would be all over the new tenant like syrup on hotcakes.

Hard to get in too much trouble with an eighty-three-year-old keeper.

Frack—she was starting to sound like a parent or something.  “Stove makes decent grilled-cheese sandwiches, and the heat works so long as you give the radiator a kick.”

“Sounds like a palace.”

Yeah.  It kind of was.  “Rent’s eight hundred a month.  Two hundred a month discount if you do the school thing.  One month’s rent for a deposit and you can move in right now.”  She’d worked it with the landlord.  If someone was going to be homeless, it wasn’t going to be a sixteen-year-old kid.

Raven stared like she’d just seen unicorns farting.  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Yeah, you do.”  Lizard fished out the envelope from Lauren.  “Payment for the painting.”  Enough for the deposit and November groceries.  Barely.  “Romano is looking for someone to help out on Friday and Saturday nights.  And this guy I know needs some help painting apartments when tenants move out.”