Witches in Flight (24 page)

He loved the amusement that danced across Nat’s face.
 
Her gift to him was peace and a
steadiness unlike anything he’d ever known.
 
His to her was to make her giggle.
 
Often.

She snuggled in under his arm.
 
“Sorry.
 
Apparently our girl in here likes your sauce.”

The three plates she’d consumed were hardly the source of his
supply problem.
 
He’d stopped
counting when Aervyn hit his fifth plate, and evidently the triplets were going
through a growth spurt.
 
And for a
non-witch, Charlie Tosh could consume some serious spaghetti.

And some serious rolls of film.
 
The man had left with a bagful, muttering things about
setting up camp in Jennie’s darkroom.
 
Aunt Jennie had looked worried, but Charlie might not have been the only
thing on her mind.

Jamie laid his head back, enjoying the hint of flowers in Nat’s
hair.
 
She was Ginia’s favorite
test subject for new lotions and potions, and this one smelled really
nice.
 
The last one had smelled
faintly like skunk, something neither his niece nor his wife had been thrilled
to hear.

Nat swung her legs over his thigh.
 
Getting comfortable was becoming more of a challenge for her.
 
“Interesting evening.
 
Congratulations.”

It had gotten a little more interesting than he’d had in
mind.
 
“Aervyn was really
unimpressed when the talent show got canceled.”
 
Something two helpings of brownies had done a lot to fix,
which was a good thing.
 
A
witchling temper tantrum wasn’t very quiet, and wiser minds had decided that
Charlie Tosh’s education could wait, given that his nephew had gone AWOL.

“A lot more non-witches mixing into Witch Central lately.”

He grinned.
 
His
wife sounded like a lifelong veteran instead of one of the latest
arrivals.
 
“You started a new
trend.”
 
Not exactly
true—there had always been some.
 
Witches had this crazy urge to make friends, and they tended to range
far and wide finding them.

There were definitely a lot more people crashing the inner
circle lately, though.

Her fingers played over his.
 
“Josh got hit pretty hard tonight.
 
He wasn’t as sure of himself as he usually is, and I don’t
think discovering you can fly plates around was his issue.”

Jamie didn’t either, and you had to admire a guy who didn’t get
thrown by the discovery that he’d landed in the deep end of the witch
pool.
 
“Lizard?”
 
His wife’s intuition beat feeble mind
powers any day of the week.

“Mmm.”

He knew by now that Nat wasn’t trying to be mysterious.
 
Sometimes she needed to mull, needed
time to find words for what she knew deep inside.
 
When she found them, it would be worth the wait.

And while Lizard and Josh had been the primary source of buzzing
curiosity for the evening, Jamie’s attention had been pulled elsewhere.
 
“Elsie seemed restless tonight.”

“She’s lonely.”
 
Nat’s sigh was full of empathy.
 
“And being here with all the happy couples wasn’t helping.”

“There are lots of happy single women in Witch Central.
 
Caro, Lauren…”
 
Jamie ran out of steam as he realized
that was about the entire list.

Nat’s giggles shook both of them.
 
“It’s because you’re all just a bunch of inveterate
matchmakers.
 
I have no idea how
Lauren’s still standing.”

He knew.
 
“She
doesn’t need a guy.
 
Most single
people have this vacant, partner-sized spot in their minds.
 
Different stuff in there depending on
the person.
 
Sometimes it’s desire
or yearning, sometimes it’s more mixed up than that.”
 
He hated fear the most.
 
No, scratch that—he hated “waiting to be a doormat”
the most.
 
“Lauren doesn’t have
that spot.
 
Elsie does.”
 
And he had no freaking clue what either
meant.

Nat looked at him now, eyes wide with surprise.
 
“You see that with mindreading?
 
Lauren’s never said anything like
that.”

“No.”
 
He squirmed,
uneasy with the most renegade and unstable of his powers.
 
“I think it’s my damned precog.
 
Kind of like a shadow of their
potential future, mixed up with who they are now.”

Now his wife’s eyes held worry.
 
“You see something for Elsie.”

It wasn’t that simple.
 
“I don’t know, love.
 
I see
possibilities, and they’re about as clear as trying to look through Aervyn’s
kaleidoscope.
 
Elsie’s bits have
more joy than most.”

“But?”

“There’s something else.”
 
And he’d tried all damn evening to focus in on it with no success.
 
Precog was notoriously unbiddable,
untrainable, unreliable.
 
“I don’t
know what, but it’s not happy.”
 
And maybe not even likely, which was the most bitter kicker.

“Whatever it is, the pendants are sensing it too.”
 
Nat held hers, breathing in the deep,
even rhythm that told him she was trying to focus.
 
“It still vibrates quietly.
 
More so in the night.”
 
She looked up, apology in her eyes.
 
“I should have told you.”

Given the way he’d freaked out the last time the pendants had
spoken, it wasn’t a big shock that she hadn’t.
 
He stroked her hair, offering a silent apology of his
own.
 
“Tell me next time.”

And made a mental note.
 
He’d forgotten to tell Melvin to turn down the volume on his wife’s
rock.
 
She had far better hearing
than most—and if it ever made her think the air in her world was gone
again, it was going to be a very banished, very melted rock.

~ ~ ~

Elsie slipped out of the house.
 
The dragging tiredness of a body used to sleeping at night
was no match for the yearning in her veins.

Her feet headed downtown on a return journey to blue, hazy
magic, her ears already seeking the slinky rhythms of alto sax and beating
drums.
 
She willed them to be
there.

Needed them to be.

And was terribly afraid she might not find them.
 
In the tangled web of her mind, visions
of dancing in Anton’s arms warred with a voice that wondered if he had only
been feverishly imagined.
 
She knew
what it was to waken with dreams that felt as real as the pillow she
cradled.
 
Psychologists called it
wish fulfillment.
 
Those were weak
words for the pounding need inside her.

Anton had to be real.
 
Her clothes had smelled of lingering smoke.

She stared up at the moon, well aware that Anton and his bar
could indeed exist—and not at all match the magic of her memory.

And this was silliness.
 
It had been only two nights.
 
Surely she wasn’t desperate enough to fabricate her own
version of Paris in less than forty-eight hours.
 
She was being ridiculous, yet another thing the old Elsie
had never been.

The moon still hung in the sky, just out of reach.
 
The cooling summer air still feathered
over her skin.
 
And just now, at
the very edges of her hearing, layered under the sounds of a Berkeley night,
she could make out a drumbeat.

What was that line Lizard had been walking around mumbling?
 
Something about going bravely into the
night.
 
Well, if Elsie Giannotto
wanted to do something about her empty spaces, she needed to be a little less
wimpy.

Elsie touched a tree on her way by, briefly enchanted by its
blooms, and sighed.
 
The empty
spaces were an unwelcome discovery.
 
Melvin had helped chase them away for a while, but he was right.
 
She didn’t have a purpose—and she
yearned for someone to look at her the way Jamie looked at Nat, or Melvin
looked at his wife.

Or the way Josh looked at Lizard, even if her roommate was too
busy convincing herself she was unworthy to do anything useful with those
smoldering eyes.
 
Elsie grinned,
feeling the stirring of her fire magic.
 
Perhaps tonight it would be
her
eyes doing the smoldering.

She’d been a little afraid of Anton last time.
 
A little overwhelmed, and a lot
unsure.
 
Tonight she planned to
remember that she was a grown woman, in charge of her own darned empty
spaces.
 

The tantalizing sounds of alto sax grew louder, calling to her
soul, the empty places and the full ones.
 
She breathed in the aromas of coffee and linguine, flowers and sea-salt
tang, all mixing in the late-night air.
 
She’d never been a creature of the night.

Until now.

Elsie walked into the blue haze, eyes seeking, a vague smile for
Rocco at the door.
 
He just grunted
and motioned with his shoulder.

She saw the curls first.
 
Anton.
 
A very real, very
sexy Anton—with welcome in his eyes and a raspberry Cosmo in his hand.

Something in Elsie’s belly unfurled.

Jennie was in no doubt as to who was at her front
door—even Charlie’s knocking had a grumpy rhythm.
 
Or rather, his banging.
 

She made her way down the stairs, willing away the brewing
headache.
 
Her pendant had been
restless half the night, her mind restless the other half.
 
And now she had a visitor with no
manners who probably intended to invade her darkroom.

Since Charlie’s darkroom marathons rivaled her own, it would
probably take days to extricate him.

And phew.
 
He wasn’t
the only one grumpy this morning.
 
She tried to paste something resembling a smile on her face before she
opened the door.
 
It wouldn’t
matter to him in the slightest, but it might improve her own mood.
 
“Morning.
 
Want some milk and cookies?”

“Do I look like I’m four?”
 
He unloaded a pile of equipment at the bottom of her stairs, leaving
only the Hasselbad around his neck.
 

Not a darkroom invasion, then.
 
A portrait session.
 
And for reasons she didn’t want to consider too closely, that made her
squirm.
 
She’d try to appreciate
the poetic irony later.
 
“Tea and
cookies?”

He considered her suspiciously.
 
“Who made the cookies?”

Sheesh.
 
“These are
Nell’s.”

“I hear Lizard makes pretty good cookies.”

Which was about as circuitous a conversation as she’d ever heard
from Charlie.
 
Jennie gestured in
the general direction of the kitchen.
 
“She does.
 
Makes better
biscuits, though.
 
She’s giving
some of the amateur chefs around here a run for their money.”

Charlie hopped up on a stool at the breakfast bar with
surprising spryness.
 
“She’s
interesting.”
 

Given the source, that was high praise.
 
And a request for information, most of
which wasn’t Jennie’s to give.
  
She could, however, do a little digging of her own.
 
“You spent a lot of time with her last
night.”