An Unlikely Witch (7 page)

Her voice shook.  "Today, they will live in our breath."

-o0o-

“Just a little to the left, dear.  And maybe up a little higher.”

Lauren shook her head ruefully and moved the string of bright, gaudy lights a little further to the left.  She grinned at Nat, up a ladder on the other side of Helga’s porch.  “This might be worse than being indentured labor for the triplets.”

Who still hadn’t unveiled
their
holiday decorating finale.  Sane minds quivered.

“
They
don’t offer you eggnog martinis,” said Helga, merrily wrapping greenery around porch pillars.  “After you get off the ladders, though.  Safety first.”

Lizard snickered from the porch swing where she sat trying to untangle a particularly unruly string of lights.  “She doesn’t want you to break before you deal with inflatable Santa over there.”

That particular box had come out with an extra helping of giggles, which, as they often did in Helga’s presence, had turned slightly bawdy.  Lauren was pretty committed to making the zesty old lady deal with Santa herself.

Lizard glanced at Nat, eyes full of mischief.  “Trinity would get a total kick out of an inflatable Santa.”

Lauren nearly snorted herself off her ladder.  Nat had Trinity’s name in the great holiday gift exchange.

“Hmm.”  Helga eyed the cardboard box, mind dancing.  “I think I might have an inflatable reindeer tucked away somewhere.  I used to have one that farted when you squeezed its nose.”

Lauren started to laugh and nearly brought down the whole string of lights.  Time to get down from the ladder.  “You’re worse than my husband.”  Whose taste in holiday decorations was outrageous, hilarious, and would definitely appreciate a farting reindeer.

“Thanks for the ideas,” said Nat dryly, working her way gracefully down to land on solid ground.

“Oh, don’t worry dear.”  Helga reached over to pat her hand.  “I’m sure you’ll come up with a wonderful idea.”  She waggled her eyebrows at her audience in general.  “I’m far more interested in what Trinity will do for me.”

It was so typical of Witch Central—funny and deadly serious at the same time. 

Nobody loved getting gifts more than their resident sexy octogenarian.  And nobody would more fully appreciate whatever came from a gift giver who was still professing allergy to the holidays.  Lauren smiled—her nieces had that pairing totally pegged.  And Helga was doing a magnificent job, walking around loudly pronouncing to everyone and anyone that she couldn’t wait for her present.

Making darn sure Trinity stayed on that particular hook.

We’re getting someone off a hook today,
sent Lizard, still working studiously on her lights. 
Nat’s a lot happier than she was an hour ago.

Yeah.
  Lauren was well aware of that—but it was a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that she wasn’t the only one checking.  Nat’s mind was light, in a way that spoke of peace and hope and an ease with things that had been tucked away for a long time.

In an alternate universe where she didn’t live with a senile, cranky crystal ball, Lauren would have considered this a nearly perfect day.

-o0o-

“Want Mama.”  Kenna snuggled into her collection of teddy bears, belying her words.  If she really wanted Nat, she’d be protesting far more loudly.

Jamie stroked her back, sending gentle nudges of calming down through his hand.  They’d had a wild night at Auntie Nell’s, and his munchkin didn’t always find turning off very easy.  “Mama’s having fun with Helga and Auntie Lauren.” 

He was smart enough to leave out Lizard.  Kenna adored the feisty poet and seemed to believe that she lived in a dark, soundproof box and only came out to amuse small children.

Almost two-year-olds had very strange minds.

“Dada sing.” 

Still awake enough to be imperious.  He grinned—she always did this after she’d played with her cousins.  Something about reclaiming her rightful place at the center of the universe.  He started to hum quietly, hoping that would be enough.  He didn’t have Nat’s singing voice, and their little diva had been known to protest his improvisational word choices.

She liked her world to be just how she liked it.  The luxury of an only child.

Something they’d never planned for her.  Jamie locked that thought behind a wall—his daughter’s mindreading skills were fiercely good, even when she was half asleep.

It was good Nat had gone.  An evening of decorating and Helga-generated outrageousness was just what any sane person would have ordered. 

It was that time of the month.  The home stretch of the crazy, twenty-nine day ride they went around again and again and again.  The trek up Heartbreak Hill. 

He would give anything for this to be the time they finally cleared the gravitational field of this evil planet he’d once lived entirely ignorant of.  Anything not to watch Nat disappear into a bathroom with a pregnancy test and then sit in there alone and quietly crumble, even as she breathed into the pain and tried to resurrect enough energy to go around the orbit again.  Hell, even to just come out of the bathroom again.

All because of a promise his magic had made.

He felt Kenna sliding into dreamland under his hand, cuddled by the trickles of energy he wrapped around her.  Comforted.

The Sullivans lived in a world where magic was an everyday thing.  An amazing, powerful, life-changing, rich thing that he couldn’t fathom being without.

Except for this.

He couldn’t wish the vision to hell—he’d tried.  He’d fallen in love with a stranger the moment he’d seen it, and there was no walking that back.  But knowing that a burp in your most fickle magic caused your wife pain every living day?  That sucked beyond all imagining. 

They were flexible, brave, adaptable people.  If life had only brought them one child, they’d have rolled with that.  There was no lack of kids in Witch Central to love, and Nat would have found some other way to finally kick in the teeth of her hellishly lonely childhood.

But they’d been promised a little boy. 

And his absence was quietly killing them.

Chapter 6

A stick did not own her.  Fifty cents’ worth of paper and plastic did not have the right to sit in the driver’s seat of her life.

And yet, every twenty-nine days, it did.

With Kenna, no pregnancy test had been necessary, her body joyously proclaiming the new presence in her core long before any test would have known what to say.

It hadn’t surprised Nat then—she’d put in long years deeply learning her body as a path to knowing herself.  She’d felt the energies shifting, her whole being parting to make room for something wild and wonderful and new, readying her mind and soul for the tectonic shift of motherhood.

In those innocent days, she’d believed she would one day become pregnant again.  And then again.  And just like with Kenna, she’d know, her body knowledge strong and true and incapable of deceit.

She’d learned since then.  Aching hope did awful, terrible things to truth.

Even now, her hand rested on her belly, positive it felt the infinitely tiny vibrations of a seed readying to grow.  Her body wanted this.  Believed in this.  Had convinced her more than once that it was true.

One time she’d even told Jamie.  Shared the delicious news shimmering in her abdomen.

And then watched him quietly shatter when she’d been wrong.

So now she used the test.  Relied on a strip of paper made by some machine in a faraway country to tell her what she couldn’t trust herself to ask her own heart.

The little plastic cup sat on the counter, unaware and unmoved by its role in her monthly ritual.  The stupid chirpy test box with its pink letters and feminine curves had already been recycled.  She refused to buy the ones with impossibly cute babies on the box or little happy faces when your test turned positive.  Lashes of torture if you weren’t one of the blessed people who got pregnant just by wanting it so.

Nat gripped the sides of the counter, trying to find her center.  Railing against some stupid anonymous marketing people in cubicles wasn’t going to make this any easier.

Some months, she managed to find a modicum of calm first.  Clearly this wasn’t going to be one of them.  She jabbed the end of the test into her collection container and stared at the line of moisture working its way up the paper.

Willing the universe to bend to the wish held in her palms of light.

She slammed the test down flat on the counter and spun around.  Looking for a wall to crawl.  A precipice to scale.  Anything.

Her mind registered the count.  Three agonizing minutes.  One hundred and eighty heartbeats.  An eternity of trying to hold a balance pose on the head of a pin.

When the metronome in her head hit time, she turned around and reached for the stick.  Impatient.  Dreading.  Feeling her lungs collapse as she read the message in the damning single line.

Not.  This.  Time.

She breathed, trying to find a way through the grief and anger and awful, stalking shadows of inadequacy.  Just as she’d done every twenty-nine days for the past year.  Knew her ability to do that was growing to a close.

And felt a single, fierce thought rise up through the agony.

This had to stop. 

-o0o-

The forces could be terrible taskmasters.

The orb watched as the shimmering possibility of the tiny snagged thread folded back into the ether, and found itself sorrowing for the human specks that would grieve so deeply.  Not all threads were meant to happen, especially for the beings so inextricably linked to the linear progression of time.

But this small boy—he was so very important.

The orb shook itself.  It was becoming confused, distracted by human priorities.  That wasn’t its job.

The forces hummed in agreement in the background.  Tools had a singular purpose.

It felt itself resisting.  Felt itself holding, just a moment longer, to a thread that would not be woven into time this day.  To the image of a small boy with a quick smile as he touched the thing they called snow.

The forces vibrated, puzzled.

The orb let go.  And, watching the vestiges of the thread disappear, felt an odd yearning. 

Just once—it wished to be able to hold the needle.

-o0o-

Nell padded down the stairs, moving slowly and dispersing lurking whispers of magic as she went.  Something was brewing in her basement—something bearing the unmistakable magical signature of her youngest son.

There was a sign on the door. 
SEcriT Work in Prguss.  GO Awy.

She grinned.  His spelling was still atrocious.  Carefully, she scanned the doorknob.  Her brothers had been masters at rigging booby-trap spells.

Nothing obvious.  Just a training circle and a few leaky atoms.  Aervyn’s magical discipline was growing by leaps and bounds this year, as was his fine-tuned control.  None of which made whatever was happening under the hood down here a good idea.

She pulled a quick funnel of air power and knocked gently on his shields. 
Hey, superdude.  What are you up to in there?

It’s a secret, Mama.

I can read that, sweetie.  Is anyone in there with you?

Nuh, uh.
 He sounded distracted.

She stuck a quick probe into his training circle and rolled her eyes as it got rebuffed.  Distracted almost-seven-year-olds with enough power to melt the entire city didn’t get to throw up unsupervised training circles in her basement. 
Are you using lots of magic in there?

Yeah.

Something shifted in his head for a moment and she caught a vague image of a fire-breathing dragon.  Terrific. 
Should someone be in there with you?  I can call Uncle Jamie or Uncle Devin if you don’t want me to know what you’re doing.
 It was the time of year of many secrets, and she tried to give her kids the space to scheme and plot them.  Even ones of the fire-breathing kind.

Nuh, uh.
 Now he sounded like he was lifting a small mountain.  And then the training circle whisked down and a bright-eyed head peered around the door.
 
"Hi, Mama.  Did you bring any cookies?"

She held out the plate in her hand and followed him into his domain, taking a covert look around.  No scorch marks.  Either the dragon had been good-tempered, or she’d shown up before the spell had been finished.

Aervyn giggled and took a cookie.  “It was only a really baby dragon.”  He held up his fingers about four inches off the table.  “It was pretty mad, though.”

Fortunately, his desire for secrets hadn’t yet extended to his ability to keep one.  She grinned and ruffled his hair.  “I thought we had rules about playing with fire magic on your own.”

“I know.  I was being careful.”  His eyes were serious.  “I was trying to make a dragon that only had a teeny-tiny bit of fire.”

That sounded like trying to make an ocean that was only a teeny-tiny bit wet.  However, Nell didn’t accuse her kids of anything without making darn sure she wasn’t going off half-cocked.  “Want to show me?”