Witches in Flight (13 page)

Josh competently swung the pram around with one hand, Bean
tucked happily in his other.
 
“Wanna feed him some bacon first?”

Lizard turned down the sidewalk.
 
Babies and families and white picket fences.
 
All normal things in Josh Hennessey’s
world.

Planet Lizard, even the cleaned-up version, only ran to greasy
diners.
 
And for the first time in
a long time, she could feel the acrid taste of injustice in her throat.
 
Freaking hell.
 
She’d grown out of thinking the world
was fair a long, long time ago.

Now was no time to bring back stupid wishes.

“Hey.”
 
Josh’s eyes
were full of empathy now—and curious.
 
“You’ve got that whole screw-the-universe look back on
again.
 
What’s up?”

“Nothing.”
 
Lizard
tried not to kick a brick wall.
 
And then almost walked into the same bricks in shock as truth somehow
leaked out of her mouth.
 
“I just
wish the world was different sometimes, that’s all.”

He was quiet for a long time.
 
“I think you’re doing a pretty good job of changing yours.”

Some stuff you could change.
 
Some of it was tattooed on your soul.
 
Lizard reached for Bean.
 
“I’ll take him inside.”
 
The crazy knitting ladies seemed a lot
easier to face than whatever pooled in Josh’s eyes.

He pulled open the door and followed her inside.
 
Apparently even pointy needles didn’t
scare Josh Hennessey.

Word had traveled long before Elsie beamed in for her afternoon
music lesson.
 
One happy witch,
incoming.

If it weren’t for the thoughtful quiet of her husband, Vero
would have waited in uncomplicated delight for her student’s arrival.
 
As it was, she had a lot on her
mind.
 
There had been a time when
she and Melvin had disagreed mightily and often—but those days had passed
long ago.

Her heart yearned for Elsie to explore freely, to trip through
the gardens of human passion, discovering both beauty and the occasional thorn.

But four WitchLight pendants didn’t tumult over a thorn.
 
And she had learned long ago never to
doubt her husband’s magic—or his love.

So she worried.
 
And
waited to set eyes on Elsie herself.
 
Because pendants might not lie—but neither did Veronica Liantro’s sight.

When Elsie arrived, her entrance was worthy of a diva.
 
An excited, infatuated one.
 
Resplendent in her glorious yellow
sundress, Elsie kissed Melvin’s cheek and twirled her way over to Vero,
feminine sunshine on the move.
 
“I
went dancing last night.
 
With the
moon and a sexy man with a French name.”

Her energy was contagious.
 
Vero smiled, caught up in the whirlwind.
 
“Ah, looking for a Paris garret, are you?”

“I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that.”
 
Elsie blushed, which did nothing to
diminish her radiance.
 
“But the
music was this wonderful jazz—you know, the kind that slides into your
belly and pushes down into your toes?”

Vero knew, indeed.
 
And she knew a few names for what tended to happen next, as well.
 
Perhaps Melvin was right to be
concerned.
 
“So many things awaken
in you, sweetheart.
 
Enjoy them
deeply—and remember to check in with that brain of yours occasionally as
well.”

Elsie frowned, face a perfect picture of confusion.
 
“My brain would have had me at home,
tucked under the covers with the curtains closed.”

And that was as much a risk to her student’s soul as anything
she might discover at a jazz bar.
 
Vero breathed—there was balance in the world for a reason.
 
Her job was to stoke Elsie’s journey of
discovery.
 
There were
others—many others—who would help her land safely.

Her darling Elsie had discovered a taste of what it was to be a
woman on a Paris or Berkeley summer night, and that was worthy of
celebration.
 
Vero rippled her
piano keys, the beginnings of a song teasing her fingers.
 
“So tell me about your Frenchman, sweet
girl.”

“His name is Anton.”
 
Elsie’s smile brought Vero back to a garret, so many years ago.
 
“He’s got strong arms and patient eyes,
and dark curls that call my fingers to touch.”

“And did you?”

Elsie grinned.
 
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

Vero laughed, remembering her own fingers and the landscape they
had traveled during her first summer in Paris.
 
She began to play, a romantic aria of longing and seeking
and love.
 
In French, no less.
 

Today, they would sing, and see if they could give the sliding
feelings in Elsie’s belly some words.

~ ~ ~

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

To:
[email protected]

From:
Vero Liantro <
[email protected]
>

Subject:
Perhaps I am a silly old man.

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

Jennie
dear,

It’s Melvin.
 
I sit
here and write this as I listen to my beautiful wife singing romantic ballads
with our Elsie.
 
They make lovely,
sweet music together—and yet I still can’t shake this strange unease.

I worry that my magic has gotten old, and I am casting suspicion
on Elsie’s happiness for no good reason.
 

It disturbs my Vero that our hearts do not beat as one on
this.
 
I can live with the
disconnect and hope it means that whichever way this works out, someone has had
good instincts, and Witch Central will be as ready as we can be.
 

It sounds like I’m preparing for an invasion.
 
Perhaps I’m just a silly old man.

Love
and light,

Melvin

~ ~ ~

Lizard scowled at the assignment.
 
Quietly—she didn’t want to wake up Bean, snuggled
safely into a basket at her feet after all the excitement at the yarn
store.
 
Professor Allard knew just
how to push on all her boundaries.
 
No matter how much she tried to keep clothes on her poetry, he kept
asking for more.

This time, they were supposed to write four-line poems about
people in their lives.
 
Could be a
friend, a sister, or the lady in the checkout line at the grocery store.
 
Four lines that captured something
important.

The first one had flowed before she’d ever left class, even if
the poem had refused to include the line about Jennie’s abysmal cooking skills.
 
Kind of mushy, but at least it was
about the contents of someone else’s insides.
 
And a revenge of sorts. Some of Jennie’s pictures were
pretty damned naked.
 

And then she’d run out of ideas.

So now she got to sit, deadline looming, beside a snoring baby,
and produce creative genius on demand.
 
Bean had been her first try, but it was impossible to write poetry about
babies without sounding like a bad Hallmark card.

The second try had moved a little closer to home, inspired by
the oddly appealing memory of Elsie practicing weird yoga pretzels in their
living room.

Your eyes seek the horizon

with
a heart not used to stretching

and
bravery only recently unearthed.

You
are bendier than you know, my friend.

Way mushy, but still something she could hand in.
 
The last one she needed, however, was
giving her fits.
 
She looked at the
four lines she’d written about Lauren.
 
They held power—the magic that happened when the words lined up in
exactly the right way.

Lizard knew better than to change them.
 
She knew damn well they were good.
 
And she knew Professor Allard’s eyes
would never see them.
 
Some things
got to stay private.

However, the assignment required three poems.
 
And if she had to sit here and suffer, maybe
she could use one of them to screw her head back on straight.

Body in ratty jeans,

Mind
in a three-piece business suit.

Crap.
 
Clearly her
head was still a Josh-hazed mess.
 
His mind didn’t match the ratty jeans, but he was no suit, inside or
out.
 
Lizard scribbled out the last
line and tried again.

Body in ratty jeans,

Mind
the sharp, circling gaze

Of
a shark.
 
A nice one.

Jeebers.
 
Lizard
refrained from banging her head on the desk.
 
Barely.
 
That
last line belonged in a bad kindergarten poem.
 
She didn’t usually have this much trouble expressing
herself.
 
She could feel the need
tugging on her now—the demand to find exactly the right words.

Body in ratty jeans,

Mind…

No.
 
That was the
end, not the beginning.
 
Now she
had it.

Some will see the suit.

Some
the shark.

I
see a mind set on a life worth living.

Dangerous
temptation in ratty jeans.

Lizard stared at the words.
 
And then, barely breathing, tucked them away, somewhere warm
and dark and hopelessly deep.

It was Grammie’s fault.
 
All the poems about sidewalks and a world of endless possibilities.
 
She’d spent way too much of her life
longing for things she couldn’t have.
 
Josh was just one more of those things.

Lizard slowly unwrapped her fingers from their death-grip on the
edge of the desk.
 
This was getting
her nowhere close to twelve stupid lines she could actually hand in.
 
Time to write poetry about the
grocery-checkout guy.
 
Or Romano’s
linguine.
 
Or anything where the
words didn’t strip a piece of her soul on the way out.

And if an ode to linguine helped her to avoid thinking about the
guy in ratty jeans who had managed to invade even her poetry, that was just
fine.

Bean stirred in his basket, spiky baby mohawk half stuck to his
cheek.
 
Lizard bent over, willing
him back to sleep—and felt the Hallmark card words line up in her head.

That one couldn’t get handed in either—it would totally
ruin her image.

~ ~ ~

Jamie ducked, the sword swooshing a hairsbreadth from his
nose.
 
“Easy there, superboy.
 
No fighting unarmed knights.”

“Work faster, Uncle Jamie.
 
My sword’s all finished and everything.
 
And Elsie-Belsie’s almost done too.
 
She says I can be the princess and you
can come rescue me.”

Jamie looked up at his nephew, dressed in a fireman hat and
Superman cape, and armed with a sword and something that looked like pink
snowballs.
 
The kid had learned
“playing princess” from his three older sisters.
 
Any “rescue” would probably involve several sword fights
with the princess and defusing whatever mischief was in the pink snowballs.