Witches in Flight (12 page)

“Lost in thought?”
 
Jennie leaned against the doorjamb and smiled in welcome.

“Oh, sorry!”
 
Elsie
laughed, offering the handful of flowers she carried.
 
“I brought you these, and Lizard sent an envelope.
 
Don’t let me forget to give it to you.”
 
The old Elsie never forgot anything,
but these days, she was more easily distracted.

“Come on in.”
 
Jennie stepped back and gestured down the hallway.
 
“I’ll make tea, and then you can tell
me why you’re bringing such pretty bribes.”

They weren’t bribes.
 
Exactly.
 
And her question
could wait.
 
She was also learning
a lot about the power of timing, and the loveliness of taking a moment to
connect with people before going about your mission.
 
“How are your grandbabies doing?
 
I saw the last pictures you sent Caro.”

“They’re smiling and making cute noises and generally winding
the world around their little fingers.”
 
Jennie grinned as they walked down the hallway together.
 
“And if I were their parents, I’d be
really afraid of the day one of them learns to crawl.”

Elsie only had to imagine little Sammy in triplicate to know why
that might be frightening.
 
“I bet
that makes taking pictures harder.”

“I’m used to moving targets.”
 
Jennie reached for a pitcher.
 
“Iced tea?
 
Cookies?
 
Not made by me, I
promise.”

Elsie grinned.
 
As
her own baking skills improved, she was beginning to understand how marginal
Jennie’s were.
 
“Just iced tea,
please.
 
Lizard made us a huge
breakfast.”
 
She rummaged in her
bag.
 
“Here, she sent this.
 
Said it was her way of getting even.”

Elsie watched Jennie open the envelope and read the words
scrawled on the crumpled paper.
 
She tried to keep her insane curiosity under wraps.

It wasn’t necessary.
 
Moments later, Jennie handed over the paper, a soft smile on her
face.
 
“If this is Lizard’s idea of
revenge, she’s way off the mark.”

Elsie read.

Big-shot artist,

purveyor
of truth in black and white.

The
camera lens that matters

is
the one in her heart.

It was beautiful, in the same way that Jennie’s pictures
were.
 
“She’s really talented,
isn’t she?”

Jennie nodded.
 
“She
is.
 
And beginning to understand the
demands of genius, I think.”

Elsie picked up the glasses of iced tea and walked over to the
table, suddenly wistful.
 
She was a
competent knitter, a somewhat talented trapeze flyer, and a decent
cyclist—but for the moment, that was about all.

Jennie sat down, her eyes watchful in that way that always made
Elsie wonder how loud her thoughts had been.
 
“You wanted to ask me to do something?”

“Nat and I are doing a workshop.”
 
Which might not be genius, but Elsie was really proud of it.
 
And it really did feel like hers.
 
“It’s Nat’s idea, but we’ve been
working together on the format.
 
It’s all about self-exploration, helping people find out new things
about themselves.”

“You’d both be good at that.”
 
Jennie sipped her tea.
 
“Is this a yoga workshop?”

“Some.”
 
Elsie
gripped her glass, suddenly a bit nervous.
 
“And some simple exercises from psychology, and we’re
borrowing a couple of ideas from WitchLight, too.
 
We were hoping you might take some before-and-after
pictures.”

Jennie just sat, very quiet—and Elsie suddenly realized
she was asking one of the world’s best portrait photographers to come take
snapshots.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
Maybe we can find someone else to do
this—it would be a waste of your talents.”

The hand that settled on hers was surprisingly tough.
 
“You were doing perfectly, right up
until that last sentence.
 
That’s
the old Elsie.”
 
Jennie’s eyes were
full of steely empathy.
 
“My
grandsons have something called a do-over, when they don’t get something right
the first time.”

Elsie sucked in her breath—and tried to get it right.
 
“We were hoping you might share your
talent with our workshop participants.
 
Give them another way to look at themselves.”
 
That was better.

Jennie looked down at her drink.
 
“My fees are fairly steep.”

Elsie melted halfway into an embarrassed puddle on the floor
before she remembered.
 
This was
Jennie, occasionally cranky witch, not Jenvieve Adams, world-famous
photographer.
 
“I have two jars of
spaghetti sauce left.
 
Jamie says
this batch might be better than his.”

She was pretty sure the blazing grin on Jennie’s face had
nothing at all to do with tomatoes.

~ ~ ~

--------------------------------------

To:
[email protected]

From:
Jennie Adams <
[email protected]
>

Subject:
I have an able team.

--------------------------------------

Dear
Vero,

You might think, after Elsie’s late-night sojourns, that this
update would be about the personal lives of our two students—but it’s
not.
 
Mostly because I know nothing
new on that front.
 

However, there is plenty afoot elsewhere in their journeys.

I just had a visit from the lovely and very motivated
Elsie.
 
She and Nat are running a
workshop—a rather crafty seed Nat seems to have planted.
 

It was fascinating to watch the new Elsie’s exuberance blend
with some of the efficiency and organization that so drove me batty when I
first met her.
 
She has some mighty
tools to work with, if she can just meld them with some of that flexibility and
empathy she’s growing.
 
Nat might
be on to something very interesting.
 
I would have shied away from giving Elsie something to organize just yet.

Good thing I pick smart people to work with.

Lauren’s pushing on Lizard too—and again, not in the way I
might have chosen.
 
I always want
to prop Lizard up, or protect her from bumps in the road.
 
Lauren wants our blonde fairy to know
she’s capable of driving over hazardous terrain.
 
I trust her instincts—she’s one of the shrewdest
navigators I’ve ever known.

So, plenty on the move, none of it involving handsome men of any
flavor.
 
As far as I know.

More
when I know it,

Jennie

~ ~ ~

Lizard hoped this wasn’t one of those ideas she’d live to
seriously regret.
 
But that whole
hamburgers-and-beach-dates conversation with Josh had been really weird, and
something inside her rebelled at leaving it that way.
 
This was her turf now.
 
And she was done with feeling crappy on her own turf.

Time to find some kind of normal.

After a morning with the Jamesons, she deserved normal.
 
Even Lauren had been rolling her eyes
in sympathy by the time they’d looked through every single house in the listing
folder, Claire Jameson complaining about every last one.
 
They were going to spend the evening
touring several, and every form of bribery in Lizard’s toolbox, including
lifetime biscuits, hadn’t been enough to convince Lauren to take over.

Sometimes being the assistant sucked.

Lizard knocked on Josh’s door, ignoring the little voice in the
back of her head asking why she had his work-at-home schedule memorized.
 
Her brain retained a lot of useless
crap.

He answered the door, phone in one hand, laptop in the
other.
 
“Hey.
 
Come on in, I’m just finishing a video
conference with Danny.
 
Want to see
the final version of the prototype presentation for tomorrow?”

Huh?

Danny laughed at her from the computer screen.
 
“Investor meeting.
 
8 a.m.
 
Good coffee, bad donuts.”

Frack.
 
She’d
totally forgotten about that.
 
That’s what happened when you put stuff in your calendar app instead of
writing it on your hand.
 
“Am I
supposed to bring the donuts?”

“Nah, we got that covered.”
 
Josh grinned.
 
“Later, Danny.”
 
He closed
the laptop.
 
“What’s up?”

She didn’t want to be in his house.
 
Lizard backed out the door.
 
“Want to get some greasy eggs?
 
I have an hour.”

His eyes stayed easy, but his mind sharpened.
 
Josh was seriously tricky like
that.
 
“You wouldn’t have a burger
with me yesterday.
 
What’s
changed?”

He wasn’t supposed to ask stuff like that.
 
“Well, you have your house, so you’re
not really my client anymore.”
 
Lizard tried not to squirm.
 
“And we live in the same neighborhood, and we’re probably doing that
maps thing together.”

He nodded, solemnly enough that she checked.
 
Nope, he wasn’t laughing at her, even
in his head.

“So I figure we need to work out a new thing.”
 
She scowled, just in case he was
getting all hopeful or anything.
 
This was definitely not walks on the beach.

Now his lips quirked.
 
“So you’re thinking we should be lunch buddies?”

That sounded kind of stupid said out loud, but she was going
with it anyhow.
 
“Or
breakfast.”
 
The diner served
greasy eggs all day.

He watched her intently a moment longer—and then his mind
eased back into easygoing Josh.
 
“Okay.
 
I like eggs pretty
much anytime.
 
Are we allowed to
share bacon in this new world order, or would that be pushing it too far?”

Yup.
 
Now he was
laughing at her in his head.
 
She
rolled her eyes and backed down his walkway—she really did only have an
hour.
 
“You coming, or what?”

He pulled the door shut behind him and caught up with her in two
steps.
 
Must be nice to have
six-foot-tall legs.
 
“Coming.
 
And for now, I’ll keep my hands off
your bacon.”

She tried not to laugh.
 
Really, she did.
 
But
whatever airborne drugs floated around on a Berkeley summer day had her
swallowing giggles by the time she hit the sidewalk.
 
Josh just walked at her side with a big, dopey grin on his
face.

It wasn’t exactly what she’d been aiming for, but it didn’t
suck.

Lizard had mostly managed to sober up by the time they reached
the crosswalk—and then Thea drove Bean’s pram around the corner straight
into Josh’s belly.
 
Which just got
the giggles going all over again, even though Thea was horrified and Bean was
most definitely no longer sleeping.

Josh plucked the yowling baby out of his pram in a fancy
football move.
 
“Hey, little
dude.
 
Not such a fun way to wake
up, huh?”
 
He winked at Thea.
 
“Don’t let your mom give you driving
lessons when you grow up, okay?”

“I’m so sorry.
 
I
have a client call in ten minutes, and Louise next door was going to watch him,
but she’s sick, and she doesn’t want to give Bean any germs, so Caro said she’d
watch him at the knitting store, and I was going way too fast.”

“Breathe.”
 
Josh
grabbed Thea’s shoulder and grinned.
 
“One baby-delivery service at your disposal.
 
You go take your call.
 
Lizard and I will deliver Bean to all the crazy knitting ladies.”

“Thanks!”
 
Thea
grinned over her shoulder, already on the move.
 
“And not all of them are crazy.”