Witches in Flight (30 page)

“I thought someone already did that.”

“Kinda.”
 
Lizard
puzzled on how to explain the nuances of corporate culture when she didn’t
really understand them herself.
 
“The first deal’s kind of a partnership.
 
I’d still have to do some work, and I’d get a cut of the
profits if it made any.”

“Mmm.”
 
Freddie
peered through the rain and made an impossibly curvy left-hand turn.
 
“And the new deal?”

“Fancy suits from Madison Avenue.
 
They buy the idea outright, give me a crap-ton of cash, and
I never see them again.”

“You need some new words, girlie.”

She grinned.
 
“You’re right.
 
Four million
is bigger than a crap-ton.”

He shook his head in not-entirely-feigned disgust.
 
What Grammie hadn’t done to clean up
her language, Freddie had finished up.
 
She still couldn’t curse without visions of an old lady and a huge black
man leaning over her shoulders, fingers wagging.

It was hard to be tough when your mouth was cleaner than the
average second-grader.

Maybe she wasn’t so tough anymore.

“Why’d you say no?”
 
Freddie glanced in the mirror, voice casual.

“Not sure.”
 
And she
wasn’t—she was still trying to figure out exactly what had possessed
Elizabeth Monroe.
 
“I had a new
skirt on.”

“That’ll do it.”
 
He
nodded sagely.
 
“What color?”

Lizard leaned her head against the window, amused.
 
Only Freddie could blow off four
million dollars and be more interested in her new skirt.
 
“Screaming red.”

“You should wear it more often.”

Fashion advice from a guy who owned six copies of the same pair
of blue pants?
 
“Why?”

“You been selling yourself short for ten years.
 
If a fancy red skirt made you stop,
then you should wear it more often.”

“I don’t sell myself short.”
 
It was a reflexive reply as hurt sliced into her heart.

“Hell you don’t.”
 
That was sailor-mouth trash talk from Freddie.
 
“You still bring biscuits when you get on my bus.”
 
He held up a paper bag, long since
empty.
 
“You still think there’s a
price of entry here for you?”

A second arrow landed in her heart beside the first.
 
She brought them because she loved him.

Dark eyes stared her down in the mirror.

She’d never been able to lie to those eyes.
 
She brought them because she loved
him—and because she always paid her fare.

Ten years, and she was still trying to trade biscuits for
love.
 

He let her sit for a while, the way he always did.
 
And then the one man who had never
asked for anything from her turned his bus into the terminal.
 
“Maybe your brain’s worth four million
dollars, girlie—”
 
He swung
sideways and pulled himself out of his chair.
 
“But it ain’t the best part of you.
 
And maybe you’re finally getting smart
enough to know that.”

She watched as he lumbered off for his coffee, empty biscuit bag
in his hand.
 
And sat, still, her
insides churning, as condensation leaked down the window onto her cheek.

Freddie’s bus, crying the tears she couldn’t.
 

~ ~ ~

Elsie picked up her guitar and settled back into her pillows,
ready for her daily practice.
 
Not
that it seemed to be making her much better, but Hector was insanely patient,
and she enjoyed the simple repetitiveness of it.

After a quick glance at her fingering charts, she pulled out the
three simple tunes that were this week’s homework.
 
And giggled at the quiet thought that Hector might be adding
songs with words to her repertoire for a reason.
 
Thanks to Vero, she was quite a competent singer.
 
Almost good enough to drown out her
abysmal guitar skills.

It pleased her dearly to pursue a skill at which she had no
talent whatsoever.

Two chords in to the first song, her bed bounced.
 
Aervyn, in for a landing.
 
She grinned, used to his surprise
visits by now.
 
He had a large
affection for bouncing on her bed.

This time, however, he sat down quietly at her feet.
 
“I didn’t know you played guitar, Elsie-Belsie.”

She wasn’t sure the noises she made qualified as playing
yet.
 
“I’m just learning.
 
I’m practicing some of the new songs
Hector is teaching me.
 
Want to
sing with me?”
 

“Sure.
 
Vero says
I’m really good at the harmony part.”

He sang harmony?
 
Elsie shook her head, amused and impressed.
 
Was there anything the little munchkin wasn’t good at?
 
Carefully, she strummed the chords once
through, trying to teach the pattern to her fingers.
 
It sounded vaguely like mauled cat, but Aervyn didn’t seem
disturbed in the slightest.
 
He
sat, swaying slightly, a happy audience of one.

One trip through the chords, and then Elsie started to add the
soft Spanish words.
 
Something
about flowers and rain and little children in big puddles.
 
It seemed appropriate.

Aervyn hummed along, catching the words from her mind almost as
fast as she thought them.
 
Handy
skill, that.
 

Twice through softly, and then Elsie stopped, grinning at her
small companion.
 
“Okay, I think we
know it now, right?”

He nodded happily.

“Well, Hector says this song is supposed to be sung with
gusto—like we mean it—to chase away the rain and bring out the
sun.
 
Think we can do that?”

He nodded even more happily.
 
“I can sing really loud.”

If Vero had been giving him a little guidance, he could probably
bring the walls down—she was awfully tough on wimpy diaphragms.
 
“Okay, superboy.
 
From the top, nice and loud.”
 
Elsie lifted her guitar and hit the
first chords with as much gusto as she could while still actually hitting most
of the strings.

And froze in shock as the first line tore out of Aervyn’s lungs
at top volume.

He stopped, eyes quizzical.
 
“What’s the matter, Elsie-Belsie?
 
Did you miss your notes?”

She picked up her guitar again, love for one adorable small boy
thundering through her heart.
 
And
started them again, from the top.

Her guitar playing was truly awful.
 
But it paled in comparison to the joyously terrible singing
of her sidekick.
 
Elsie giggled as
she sang along to what might be the most off-key duet in the history of Witch
Central—and loved every moment of the harmony.

And marveled at how very many ways there were to be happy.

Why did everyone always come to visit the moment she settled in
to her darkroom?
 
Jennie walked
down the stairs to the tempo of the beating on the door, grumbling.
 
She’d just finally gotten rid of
Charlie Tosh, and now there was another invader at the gates.

Grumpy old woman.
 
She laughed quietly at herself as she pulled open the front
door—and discovered the invader was five feet tall and bearing gifts.
 
“Good morning.
 
That smells like breakfast.”

“Nope.”
 
Lizard
eased in the door.
 
“It’s a bribe.”

It was a damn good one.
 
The cinnamon oozing from the bag Lizard carried could have made a
platoon of witches beg.
 
“Is it
illegal?
 
Immoral?
 
Does anybody die?”

Her student grinned, a far cry from the scowl that would have
greeted such teasing not so long ago.
 
“No, no, and only if you screw up.”

Well, those were fairly decent odds.
 
Jennie reached for the bag.
 
“I’ll do it.”

Lizard’s mind got tentative for a moment—and then firmed
up decisively, as one witch pulled herself up by some impressive mental
bootstraps.
 
She reached into her
pocket and pulled out a small black plastic container.
 
“I need you to develop this for me.”

Charlie’s film.

There was only one reason ever to look at a Charlie Tosh
photograph.
 
You had to want to see
truth.
 
Stark, honest, unglossed
truth.

It had taken Jennie twenty years to be ready to look.
 
Lizard had made the journey in only a
few days.
 

Jennie reached for the film canister slowly.
 
“It’ll take me a couple of hours to
process this.”
 
And dammit, this
baby bird wasn’t all the way out of the nest yet.
 
“I’ll get some milk to go with whatever you’ve got in that
bag.
 
Come on up and I’ll show you
the dying art of darkroom photography.”

Cinnamon buns and company in her inner sanctum.
 
Jennie spared a sigh for whatever host
of planets was moving in retrograde and went into the kitchen for milk and
napkins, little black container tucked safely in her pocket.
 
No point giving a brave witch any easy
opportunities to back out.

When she swung back past the bottom of the stairs, Lizard was
still standing there, looking oddly vulnerable.

More going on here than grumpy-old-man photos.
 
Jennie slowed down, handing a glass of
milk to Lizard.
 
“What’s been
happening with you lately?”
 
Her
spies had been relatively quiet.

Halfway up the stairs, Lizard began talking.
 
“I wore a red skirt, turned down four
million dollars, I’m sick of romantic poetry, and Josh is acting weird.”

That was a heck of a list.
 
Jennie turned at the top of the stairs and decided to tackle things in
the order they’d come out.
 
“That
the red skirt?”

Lizard brushed it self-consciously.
 
“Yeah.
 
I wore
it for Freddie.”

Which sounded like a story all by itself—but Freddie
Germaine had rock-solid instincts, and Jennie had more important fish to
fry.
 
Time enough to dig for that
story later.
 
She opened her
darkroom door and waited for Lizard’s reaction.
 
To some, the dark was oppressive.
 
To others, a place to hide.
 
For Jennie, it had always brought peace.

Her student walked in, glass of milk in one hand, bag of heaven
in the other.
 
“Where can I put
food?”

A darkroom guest with manners—that was a good start.
 
“Anywhere on that left counter.
 
The right one’s covered in chemicals
that will mutate your DNA.”
 
Probably not, but she’d found it a useful threat over the years to keep
beginners in line.
 
Then again,
Lizard had probably had plenty of exposure to the dark side of chemistry.

Jennie considered the bag in Lizard’s hand, fought a hard battle
with temptation, and reached for a couple of developing trays.
 
The goodies could wait just another
minute or two.
 
“First I have to
process the film, turn it into negatives.
 
After that, I can run you some prints.”