Witches in Flight (29 page)

Jeebers.
 
“What
happened to you?
 
Hell freeze
over?”

He grinned.
 
“Nah.
 
Sometimes I have to
dress down a little for the clients.
 
Josh has some bigwig in the conference room who wants to talk you.
 
Suit type.”

“How come you’re going, then?”

“Moral support.”

“Your job to get me in the room, huh?”
 
Goody.
 
“Sorry
you had to play dress-up.
 
I
thought Josh is supposed to talk to the suits.
 
How come he needs us?”

Danny shrugged.
 
“Dunno, but he’s the boss-man.
 
He calls, I come.”

Her boss ate green linguine and talked too much.
 
Josh was… something else.
 
Lizard had the sudden urge to go home
and come back in her rattiest delinquent gear instead of her snazzy new red
power skirt.
 
Which was probably
not the most mature reaction of all time.
 
“Is there something to eat in there?”

“Boss-man always has food, or the natives might rebel.”
 
Danny looked out the windows in sudden
confusion.
 
“What meal are we on?”

Someone spent way too many late nights writing code.
 
“One that comes with food.”
 
She pulled open the conference room
door, feeling all chivalrous.
 
“After you.”

She was glad for Danny’s wide back shielding her when they
walked into the room.
 
There wasn’t
one
suit.
 
There were
three.
 
Or four.
 
It was hard to count with all the
pinstripes making her dizzy.
 
And a
quick scan said she was the shiny new object they were all focused on.

Holy frack.
 
Keeping
her eyes on the biggest one, she sat down beside Danny and tried to figure out
how to play it.
 
Bolting for the
door probably wasn’t going to work in strappy sandals, and she was still winded
from the climb up.
 
Fine.
 
Time to use the red skirt.
 
“Good morning, everyone.
 
I’m Elizabeth Monroe.”
 

Josh was surprised, Danny amused.
 
Big-suit guy and his minions just nodded like they met up
with power skirts named Elizabeth every day.
 
“I’m Nathaniel Jenkins.
 
I represent a Madison Avenue venture capital firm.
 
We’re here to facilitate an offer for
your company.”

Lizard had no idea what Nathaniel Big Suit was talking about,
but she’d learned to smell a deal in progress.
 
Whatever was on the table here, it was hot.
 
“I’m always willing to listen to an
offer, Mr. Jenkins.
 
What do you
have in mind?”
 
She hoped he
started by, oh, telling her which freaking company he might be talking about.

Big Suit pulled out enough paper to make a small forest
weep.
 
“The supporting details are
here, and I’ve discussed many of them with your representative.”
 
He nodded briefly in Josh’s
direction.
 
“But in a nutshell,
we’d like to buy the intellectual property rights and work done to date on your
neighborhood mapping project.
 
We
have a client very interested in acquiring these rights, and he has the deep
pockets required to launch your work to a national audience.”

She’d gotten a lot better with big words in the last two
months.
 
Short version—we
want your shiny toy, and then it won’t be yours anymore.
 
And since when had her maps become
famous enough for Madison Avenue to pay attention?
 
“We have a pretty good team here.”
 
She’d also learned how to stall with the best of them.

“And you’ve made an excellent start, but more capital and
extensive national relationships enable my client to make you a rich woman very
quickly.
 
It’s an excellent
offer.
 
Eight million split into
three payments, with the first fifty percent due on signing.”
 
He tapped the top of the paper
stack.
 
“You’ll want to have your
lawyer review the contract, of course.”

Lizard’s vision hazed.
 
Lawyers, paper, capital, blah blah blah.
 

Sign her name, get four million dollars.

She didn’t live in a world where this stuff happened.
 
And from the surprise beating off
Danny, it didn’t happen all that often in his world, either.

“It’s an excellent offer.”
 
Josh’s eyes were casual.
 
His mind was anything but.
 
“We can’t beat it financially.
 
We offer you ownership.
 
Participation.”
 
Fun.
 
The last wasn’t said, but she didn’t
have any trouble hearing it.

Big Suit nodded sagely, mentally swatting at a fly.
 
“You’re a busy real estate
executive.
 
My client is offering
you the opportunity to benefit financially from your excellent idea without
having to invest your time in developing it.”
 
He stood up, sliding paper mountain across the table.
 
“If you have any questions, feel free
to contact my people.”
 
His
pinstriped minions nodded like bobble-head dolls.

He expected her to sign—not now, but eventually.
 
She could read certainty all over him.

Danny expected her to sign, too—and it made him sad.

Josh was as inscrutable as she’d ever seen him.

Lizard looked back at Big Suit, flanked by his minions, and
wished he was a jerkwad—some kind of Ivy League slime sent to buy a piece
of her brain.
 
But he wasn’t.
 
He was a business guy with a good
offer, and pretty sure he knew her price.

Four million dollars.
 
Due on signing.

And then her idea wouldn’t be hers anymore.
 
The one that had made her feel
not-stupid.

Lizard stared at the contract for a long time—long enough
to have the minds in the room buzzing.
 
With concern.
 
With
surprise.
 
With victory.
 

She swallowed.
 
Wiped her sweaty hands on her new red power skirt.
 
And pushed the papers back across the
table.
 
“We have a good team
here.
 
I appreciate your offer, but
at this time, I decline.”

And then Elizabeth Monroe walked confidently out of the room and
tried desperately not to puke.

~ ~ ~

Elsie beamed.
 
Their
workshop class stretched over into triangle pose, and Kathy was in the very
center of the room, one perfectly aligned mat in a sea of chaos—with her
eyes screwed tightly shut.
 
Her arm
reached crazily toward the left wall.
 
Her legs were in something that resembled more of a rhombus than a
triangle.
 
And her hip alignment
was bad enough that Nat was on her way over.

But Kathy was smiling.

And that made everything different.

Nat reached for Kathy’s hips—and then saw the closed
eyes.
 
Her hands stopped, face
considering.
 
And then she stepped
away without touching.
 
Her voice
traveled out softly to the class.
 
“There are all kinds of rules for how you line things up in triangle
pose.
 
Today, I want you to ignore
them.
 
Feel the pose—the
shape, the lines, the funny rumply bits.”

The class laughed.
 
Nat grinned and kept talking quietly.
 
“What part of you touches the earth?
 
The sky?”
 
Kathy’s arm shifted a little closer to the ceiling, along
with several other hands in the room.

Nat nodded in approval and winked at Elsie.
 
A gentle hand here and there, but she
never touched Kathy with anything other than a soft river of words.
 
“Where does the pose make you
stretch?
  
Where does it ask
you for more strength?”
 
Kathy’s
wonky hips shifted into something resembling alignment.
 
Kenny, struggling mightily to reach his
hand to the floor, miraculously found his leg instead.

A magical kind of ease settled over the room as Nat’s words
flowed.
 
Elsie watched in awe as a
master yoga teacher pulled beauty from a room full of awkwardness—with
only her words.
 
And then jumped as
Nat’s hand settled quietly on her shoulder.

Elsie smiled, still wrapped up in the magic happening in the
room.
 
“They’re beautiful.”

“Yes.”
 
Nat’s voice
was soft summer breezes.
 
“And it
all flows from the woman in the middle of the room with her eyes closed.
 
I’m just following the path you set her
on.
 
You tossed the pebble that
created this—I’m just fanning the ripples a little.”

Kathy’s face shone with something akin to joy.
 
Elsie was pretty sure a dimmer version
glowed from her own.
 

And somewhere, much deeper—a seed planted.

~ ~ ~

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

To:
[email protected]

From:
Vero Liantro <
[email protected]
>

Subject:
Re: Lizard just gave us hell.

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

Jennie
dearest,

The WitchLight journey never ends—and you bring that
lesson home for Melvin and me once again.
 
We will forever be fellow travelers with those we love, and that is as
it should be.

Our nestlings are getting ready to fly, and there is no greater
joy—even if it comes with tinges of sadness and a little nail biting,
hoping they see the tree just ahead to the left.
 
You were not sent easy students for your first two, Jennie,
my love—and you have been a wondrous mentor, just as the two of them will
be one day.
 
Melvin has always said
that it is the most difficult students who make the best guides.
 
A special kind of karmic balancing, I
suspect.

I will share with you the one truth I have learned about taking
flight.
 
It’s the time you look
least to those who love you—and the time you need them most.
 
The work is not yet done.
 
It is the last notes of an aria that
are the most important, and I’m sure there is something similar in the
mysteries of your darkroom.
 
They
will need you yet, Lizard and Elsie, even as they flap fuzzy wings and feel
their feet lifting off.

I asked Melvin for any words of advice.
 
He said to speak to the truth that has
bloomed in their hearts.
 
Which is
lovely—and full of the mystery my husband so often favors.

And it took a poet to put the best words I’ve ever heard on this
thing we call WitchLight.
 
We help
people find their lives.
 
It
touched Melvin so deeply that he’s etched it on all our pendants.

The
light is so very bright today,

Vero

~ ~ ~

“He got a name, girlie?”

Lizard glanced up at Freddie, surprised.
 
In general, no matter how long she sat
on Freddie’s bus, he waited for her to talk first.
 
“Who?”

“The demon chasing your tail and making you sulk for three full
loops of my route.”

Crap.
 
Time always
passed easily on the bus, but that meant she’d been sitting for nearly three
hours.
 
No wonder her butt was
numb.
 
“Thinking, that’s all.”

“Mmm.”
 
Freddie
sounded unconvinced.

She looked out the window.
 
Rain in summer should be illegal, especially when it lasted for three
full loops of Freddie’s route.
 
“I
got offered four million dollars.
 
Turned it down.”

“Good.
 
I don’t want
to have to come bail you out.”

She laughed, trying to imagine Freddie’s bus, full of cash,
pulling up at the local courthouse.
 
“Nothing illegal.
 
They just
wanted to buy my maps idea.”